Rahel Varnhagen; a portrait

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THE LIBRARY
OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

IN MEMORY OF
EDWIN CORLE

PRESENTED BY
JEAN CORLE

The Century of the Child
The Education of the Child
Love and Marriage
The Woman Movement
Rahel Varnhagen

RAHEL VARNHAGEN IN 1817.
FROM AN ENGRAVING IN THE LIBRARY OF UPSALA UNIVERSITY.

Rahel Varnhagen

A Portrait

By Ellen Key

Translated from the Swedish by

Arthur G. Chater

With an Introduction by Havelock Ellis

G. P. Putnam's Sons

New York and London

Cbe fmicherbocfter press

1913

COPYRIGHT. 1913

BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

TTb« ftnicfccrbocfter PKM, Itaw Keck

2035283

" Still und bewegt."

(Holderlin: Hyperion.)

Du schweigst und duldest, und sie verstehn dich nicht,
Du heilig LebenI welkest hinweg und schweigst,
Derm ach! vergebens bei Barbaren
Suchst du die Deinen im Sonnenlichte,

Die zartlichgrossen Sealen, die nimmer sind!

Doch eilt die Zeit. Noch siehet mein sterblich Lied
Den Tag, der, Diotima! nachst den
Gottern mit Helden dich nennt und dir gleicht.

(Holderlin: Diotima.)

PREFACE

THE following pages are not a study in literary
history; no search has been made for new au-
thorities, and no stress is laid on literal accuracy
in the case of the sources that have been used.
Such a work was within neither the aim nor the
compass of this book.

My aim has been to give a portrait of the great-
est woman the Jewish race has produced; to my
mind also the greatest woman Germany can call
her daughter.

In spite of the number of works on Rahel the
task is not superfluous. Among even cultured
Germans, men and women, to whom I have spoken
of Rahel, five out of ten knew nothing of her, four
had heard something about her, and one had real
knowledge of her !

My own impression is not a new one. I was
a child when my attention was first caught by
a few words about her; when quite young, I read

Vlll

Preface

two essays on her in the Revue des Deux Mondes,
by Blaze-Bury and by Karl Hillebrand. Later on,
I lived in Rahel, ein Buck des Andenkens, and as
long ago as 1885 I wrote in the Revue my first
essay on her, which I called "Rahel, a Person-
ality." Some parts of that little essay are in-
cluded in this book, and there is not one of the
views of Rahel which I then held that is not re-
produced here, though in a more developed form.

I have concentrated my delineation exclusively
around Rahel' s own person. Those who desire
a more detailed picture of Rahel's age and con-
temporaries may be referred to O. Berdrow's
great, conscientious, and sympathetic work, Rahel
und ihre Zeit. Furthermore, I have based my
portrait of Rahel as far as possible on her own
words. These are here quoted either directly or
indirectly, or sometimes merely reproduced in
their leading ideas. Only by such treatment was
the concentration possible which was imposed by
the compass of the present work. In the same
way, the letters are not always quoted in chrono-
logical order: an earlier one may appear later, or
vice versa, or a portion of a letter may occur in one
place and another portion in a different one; that is,
where the chronological connection was unimport-

Preface ix

ant but the psychological connection had to be
made clear. I think also that in certain cases
Rahel's train of thought is made clearer by this
free method of reproduction, and that here and
there a slightly altered punctuation has made the
direct quotations easier to understand. These
liberties, forbidden to the learned historian of
literature, are as permissible in tracing a portrait
as the liberties a painter takes with a view to
bringing out the essential and omitting the acci-
dental in the model of whom he seeks to produce
a characteristic picture.

Whether I have succeeded in producing such a
picture, opinions will of course be divided. My
hope of having to some extent understood what
is characteristic in Rahel's personality rests ex-
clusively on the love she has inspired in me. For
a profound love is a guide, when we seek to pene-
trate a person's being or work; whether this per-
son is still moving with us along what we call the
path of life or whether she influences us as one of
those dead who live eternally. Each time I have
returned to Rahel, my love has increased. More
and more clearly have I perceived the truth of
Brandes's judgment: that Rahel "is the first
great and modern woman in German culture";

x Preface

of Hillebrand's: that Rahel as a woman and
Goethe as a man are in the same degree typical of
their age. But side by side with this perception
of Rahel's objective importance, her subjective
value has become to me greater and greater, and
there is in the literature of the world no woman's
book — except the poems of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning — that I should be more sorry to do
without than Rahel's letters.

With this confession of my "lack of objectivity "
— and therewith of my conviction that this defect
is the real merit of my little work — I now let it go
out into the world in the hope that Rahel will
once more prove her power as a "guide of the
soul " and " consoler of the heart. "

ELLEN KEY.

INTRODUCTION

IT is more than seventy years since Carlyle,
shortly after her death, brought Rahel Varn-
hagen before the English-speaking world. Yet,
even to-day, she is not a familiar personality to us.
Many people who count themselves well informed
would be puzzled to say who she was and what
she stands for. Even among those who are seek-
ing to work out her ideals into real life, one sus-
pects, not a few feel no responding thrill of blood
when they hear the name Rahel.

Carlyle's estimate, indeed, after his wont, was a
little grudging. Rahel Vamhagen was a person-
ality, not a writer. As she herself well realised,
she was constitutionally incapable of attaining
artistic expression with a pen. Her concentrated
telegraphic method of letter-writing, filled out
with notes of exclamation and notes of interroga-
tion, the "dashes and splashes," the "whirls and
tortuosities, " sorely tried Carlyle's patience. Yet

xii Introduction

he recognised that there were grains of gold hid-
den in these packed inarticulate thoughts and
emotions. He placed Rahel Vamhagen even
above Madame de Stael. She has ideas, he
remarks, unequalled in De Stael, and a sincerity,
a pure tenderness, a genuineness, which that
celebrated woman, if she ever possessed, had early
lost.

Carlyle, naturally and almost inevitably, ap-
proached Rahel Varnhagen mainly from the
literary side. Some forty years later, her person-
ality had begun to become clearer, and then, once
more, another English writer, this time a woman,
approached the subject more rightly as a matter
for biography. Mrs. Vaughan Jennings's RaJiel:
Her Life and Letters, published in 1876, is a good
book, written with much sympathy, skill, and
care; it may be read with interest to-day, al-
though it is not a complete account of Rahel's life.
It was not until 1900 that Otto Berdrow published
his Rahel Varnhagen, ein Lebens- und Zeitbild,
which may fairly be regarded as the final bio-
graphy. Berdrow is completely equipped with all
the facts bearing on Rahel, many of them the
result of his own research, but his biography, for
all its fulness, is no heavy and pedantic work of

Introduction xiii

mere scholarship. He presents a living picture
of his heroine, and so far as possible seeks to make
her speak to us in her own words. This work,
which has appeared in a new and revised edi-
tion, is still unknown to English readers, who
have, for the most part, to gain their knowledge
of Rahel from an occasional essay, such as the
quite competent chapter which Miss Mary
Hargrave has included in her recent book,
Some German Women and their Salons. Rahel
Varnhagen has not proved an attractive figure
to the literary adventurers in search of a
subject.

It is easy to understand why this should be.
Rahel was not a brilliant writer; no great practi-
cal achievement can be credited to her; there was
nothing conspicuously romantic about her life.
Her nature never attained full expression. Partly
as the result of her youthful struggles, partly, it
may be, by natural temperament, her energy was
permanently held back from effective action.
She was never able to strike out boldly and freely
into life. But behind the veil that obscured her
the soul of this little Jewess was an ever-burning
flame, and the light and the warmth were divined
by those who were permitted to come in close

xiv Introduction

contact with her, "a real woman," as Goethe
said of her, "with the strongest feelings I have
ever seen and the completest mastery of them."
Her nature might never become vigorously ar-
ticulate in action or even in speech, but in
the intensity of its emotional impulse and the
clarity of its intellectual vision, it moved freely
and audaciously, without regard for the fash-
ions of the world, toward a goal that lay
ahead.

It thus comes about that, however Rahel Varn-
hagen may have been neglected, she really has a
hidden significance which only awaits the un-
veiling hands of those who possess the genius and
the intimate sympathy to reveal it. That is why
this book of Ellen Key's is of peculiar value and
interest. A woman who is herself one of the chief
representatives of some of the most vital move-
ments of the day here brings before us, in clear
and vivid outline, the woman who, nearly a
century earlier, was the inspired pioneer of
those movements. For Ellen Key, there is no
woman's book in the literature of the world,
except Mrs. Browning's poems, that it would be
more difficult to dispense with than Rahel Varn-
hagen's Letters. It may be that not a few of

Introduction xv

the readers of this stimulating book of Ellen
Key's, led by it to the study of Rahel, may
come to feel that such a declaration is scarcely
extravagant.

WEST DRAYTON,
December, 1912.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

PREFACE .
I. ORIGIN
II. PERSONALITY

III. LOVE

IV. RELIGION .

V. FELLOW-FEELING
VI. SOCIAL LIFE
VII. GOETHE .
VIII. SENSE OF BEAUTY
IX. LETTERS .
BIBLIOGRAPHY

rvn

ILLUSTRATIONS

RAHEL VARXHAGEN IN 1817 . Frontispiece

From an engraving in the Library of Upsala
University.

FACING PAGZ

RAHEL VARXHAGEN IN 1796 ... 2

From the bas-relief by Friedrich Tieck.
Photograph by Bruckmann.

Rahel Varnhagen

CHAPTER I

ORIGIN

Now and then we meet in life or in letters with
a person — sometimes a man, but more often a
a woman — who occupies no exceptional position,
either through creative genius, or artistic ex-
ecution, or even through learning, energy, or
beauty, and yet this being exercises so decisive
a power over our existence that our life comes
under an indestructible influence, but at the same
time one from which our own liberation proceeds.

For the secret of the power of these rare beings
is that they themselves are personalities through
and through, and intensify the personality in
every one else. Such a being may belong to a
bygone age and yet fill us with a wonderful sense

2 Rahel Varnhagen

of being her contemporary. Since nothing in her
was a matter of custom or convention, we feel not
only that she thought but, what is even rarer,
that she loved and suffered as we people of the
present day, but more deeply. Everything in
her is so primordial, so naturally strong, that one
imagines one's self to be witnessing the play of the
early forces of the race, and at the same time to be
confronted by a revelation of the ethical depth,
aesthetic sensitiveness, and psychological com-
plexity to which the development of humanity may
lead as its final result. As we watch the thoughts
and feelings of such a glorious being rushing forth
in a Dionysiac train, but intoxicated only with
vital force, we feel ourselves more and more
liberated from semblance and fortuity. We learn
to believe that what is peculiar to each is in-
dispensable to all; unhesitatingly, indeed without a
thought, we begin to be ourselves and, under the
influence of this great personality's passion for
truth, we do not understand how we have been
able to wear our protective disguise or how we
can resume the mask beneath which we have con-
cealed our real features. We then divine what
significance this being — who has produced such
emotion in us simply through our having caught

RAHEL VARNHAGEN IN 1796.

FROM THE BAS-RELIEF BY FRIEDRICH TIECK.
PHOTOGRAPH BY BRUCKMANN.

Origin 3

fragments of her nature in some journal or letters —
must have possessed for her contemporaries. We
see that the mere fact of her having lived was
an immense contribution to civilisation, a never-
ceasing evolutionary force.

Such a personality, the concrete realisation of
what the foremost spirits among her contempor-
aries aimed at in their ideas — and at the same time
the forerunner of our age, since she prophetically
taught her contemporaries to hope for the truths
we now live on — was Rahel.

But if the first impression of Rahel is this over-
flowing wealth of life and primitive force, the next
is that in this life also tragedy was the central
point of the Dionysia.

The root of her being — like the Orchis maculata —
shows a light and a dark hand, tightly clasped in
each other.

Rahel herself for a long time regarded her Jew-
ish descent as the dark side of her destiny. And
she was right in the sense that her descent from a
people that had suffered and been humiliated
for thousands of years determined her own char-
acter and through it her experiences.

Outwardly, on the other hand, Rahel's child-
hood and youth coincide with the period of the

4 Rahel Varnhagen

Jewish revival, especially in Berlin ; a period dur-
ing which the Jews emerged from their segre-
gated and despised position with a rapidity that
is more often rendered possible by the influence
of the spirit of the age than by legislation.

Frederick the Great did not do much to alter the
legal position of the Jews. But the freedom from
prejudice, which was diffused around him in ever
wider circles, was also to the advantage of the
Jews. And to this indirect influence was added
a direct one, through Moses Mendelssohn, the
liberator of the Jews from their own prejudices,
their awakener to a perception of their own
powers. Hitherto the Jews, in Mendelssohn's
words, had only shown their strength "in prayer
and suffering, but not in action." He conjured
up in them the desire of freedom and the in-
stinct of development. Himself a deist in the
spirit of the age of enlightenment, he never-
theless remained in the Jewish congregation in
order to be able to combat from within such pre-
judices as gave rise, for example, to a Jewish boy —
a few years before Mendelssohn's first book was
published — being expelled from the Mosaic con-
gregation for having carried, on behalf of another

Origin 5

person, a German book from one street to another !
Mendelssohn ventured to write in German and
to translate the Old Testament ; he caused a school
to be opened, in which the Jewish youth learned
the German language — until that time the Jews
spoke a jargon that was neither German nor
Hebrew — and participated in the wealth of Ger-
man culture. Thus was spun the first and
strongest thread of the bond that thenceforward
year by year united the Jews more and more
firmly to the German people.

The self-esteem with which the Prussian nation
as a whole was filled under Frederick II., caused
that of the Jews also to increase. These same
Jews, who were still subject to exceptional laws,
one of which — renewed as late as 1802 — placed
them in one respect in the same category as thieves
and murderers; these same Jews, of whom a
Moses Mendelssohn still knew what it was to
have stones thrown at himself and his children
during their walks outside the Jewish quarter,
these same Jews now became not only great lead-
ers of financial enterprise and generous philan-
thropists, but leaders of society as well. During
the last quarter of the eighteenth century it was
not only the masculine half of the fashionable

6 Rahel Varnhagen

world of Berlin that mixed with the foremost Jew-
ish families, but that fashionable world itself that
eagerly sought admission to the homes of those
families.

No doubt princes, noblemen, and diplomats had
often come in contact with the Jewish bankers —
in connection with loans. But when, after this,
bankers threw open their drawing-rooms to the
young members of the aristocracy, they found
there so much attraction that it soon became a
valued favour, and then good tone to mix in these
Jewish circles.

The young men, more or less penetrated by the
ideas of the time, found in Jewish houses a more
intelligent, unprejudiced, and easy social tone than
was permitted by the women of their own families.
The young, handsome, cultured, and vivacious
women who were the leaders of the Jewish salons
invited, for instance, actors and actresses, who as
a rule were still excluded from "good society,"
to their houses. Good music was performed, fine
works of art decorated the rooms; scholars, poets,
and artists were not only present, but conversed
with more freedom than elsewhere, encouraged by
their hostesses, who possessed a frankness, a men-
tal alertness, a warmth, that were usually absent

Origin 7

in the German ladies of the time. And soon the
young men brought with them a sister or a friend,
who was anxious to share the social privileges about
which the male members of her family were en-
thusiastic. In this way the Jewish salons also
acquired an indirect influence on the development
of social life in wider circles. Thus for the first
time the Jewish woman fulfilled a civilising mission
in modern society.

In the European history of the Jews themselves
more than one woman had distinguished herself
before this.1 But the Jewish women's great
and rapid receptivity for another civilisation,
with different objects from those of the purely
Jewish culture, appears first in the time of the
Jewish salons of Berlin. It proved that the new
"seed fell on an altogether new, virgin soil."3
And when this is the case — Russia and America
afford evidence of it in abundance — we always see
a setting-aside of time-honoured forms, a break

1 For example, Maria Nunez, who in conjunction with Jacob
Tirado founded the first Spanish-Jewish congregation at Amster-
dam; Dona Gracia Mendoza, who gave shelter and aid to all the
homeless among her people, in addition to promoting Jewish
culture; Berusia as a thinker, Rebecca Tiktiner as a writer, and
Sarah Copia Sullam as a poet, who were all independent
influences.

a Henriette Here.

8 Rahel Varnhagen

with tradition, even in the useful meaning of
the word, while their disadvantages are counter-
balanced by great advantages.

Among the Jewish youth there appeared both
the disadvantages and the advantages we are
speaking of: for example, great zeal for cul-
ture, mental mobility, and sometimes a profound
originality.

The Jewish women in particular, who had more
time and leisure than the men, showed in their in-
tellectual interests a passion and a capacity for
cultivation which did not always imply a cor-
responding individuality. Such an individuality
was present in certain of these Jewesses; others
again appeared original only through qualities
which belonged to their race. They were all sub-
ject in a peculiar way to the Oriental patriarchal
despotism that still obtains to-day in many a Jew-
ish home, and the more frequently as one ap-
proaches the eastern boundary of Europe. On the
other hand they received impressions from the
liberal ideas of the time and from its most refined
culture. Young Jewish girls had access, through
their married friends, to books, studies, acquain-
tances, which perhaps their own homes did not
offer them. They read Voltaire, Shakespeare,

Origin 9

and Tasso in the original; they revelled in con-
temporary German literature, became enthusiastic
admirers of Goethe. All the intellectual hunger
that had been growing for generations among
their people could now at last be satisfied. They
lived in a time that took its colour and form from
great minds and great events, and their essential
development was now determined by their own
time, and no longer by the traditions of a thousand
years. The strongest and most elastic among
them — like Dorothea Mendelssohn — transform the
destiny imposed on them by paternal authority,
and the social and intellectual emancipation that
has imperceptibly fallen to their lot as a con-
sequence of the age they live in, is consciously com-
pleted by themselves in their deepest personal
relations.

Henriette Herz — in a certain sense Rahel's rival
in the social life of Berlin — declares that the soul
of the Jewish woman, thus awakened, reached its
highest development in and through Rahel.

Rahel possessed the characteristics that dis-
tinguish great minds among her people: a deep
longing for directness of life in sunshine and
splendour, in fervour and passion, and an equally

io Rahel Varnhagen

deep longing for the calm of the desert, there to
meditate on life, its paths and its goal. The in-
tellectual energy that oppression had checked in
its outward tendency had in Rahel — as in the
foremost of her people — turned inwards. Rahel,
through her independence of thought and her
passion for liberty, was far in advance of the
women of her time, Jewish as well as German.
But viewed in connection with the whole de-
velopment Rahel is typical of the great move-
ment which is still taking place — that movement
which seeks to evolve the completely human
personality from the feminine creature of
sex.

In the innumerable records of admiration that
her contemporaries have left about Rahel, her
race is scarcely mentioned — a thing that in these
days of anti-Semiticism strikes one as almost in-
conceivable. But it seems as though the human-
ism of that time was so profound that the question
of race, among cultivated people, had lost its
meaning. Or did perhaps Rahel's own great
personality place her beyond and above all cus-
tomary points of view where her people were con-
cerned? Or were the bright sides of that people

Origin u

more conspicuous and the dark sides less so than
in our time?

Whether it was that one of these reasons or all
together caused her contemporaries to see in her a
personality equally detached and unique — it is
certain that this way of regarding herself did not
free her from the pain of belonging to a nation so
long exiled and wronged, the less so as she — in
common with other delicately organised Jews —
was doubly pained by all the consequences this
past history had left behind in the soul of the
people. Every prejudice, every instance of ill-
breeding, every baseness that she encountered in
those around her afflicted her more deeply than
similar things met with elsewhere.

"I imagine that just as I was being thrust into this
world a supernatural being plunged a dagger into my
heart, with these words: 'Now, have feeling, see the
world as only a few see it, be great and noble ; nor can
I deprive you of restless, incessant thought. But
with one reservation: be a Jewess!' And now my
whole life is one long bleeding. By keeping calm I
can prolong it ; every movement to staunch the bleed-
ing is to die anew, and immobility is only possible to
me in death itself . . . ."

" How loathsomely degrading, offensive, insane, and
low are my surroundings, which I cannot avoid. One
single defilement, a mere contact, sullies me and dis-

12 Rahel Varnhagen

turbs my nobility. And this struggle goes on for
ever! All the beauty that I meet with in life passes
me by as a stranger, and I am compelled to live un-
known among the unworthy!"

It is in connection with this extreme sensitive-
ness that we must interpret Rahel's later words:
that whole forests of vegetation within her had
been laid waste by "parents, brothers, and sisters,
men and women friends, and miserable lovers."

That Rahel should have ascribed to her descent
all the sufferings that tormented her, is justified in
a deeper sense than perhaps she herself intended.
Outwardly there was scarcely more than one
sorrow in her life that was caused — and that only
in part — by her being a Jewess, namely, the break-
ing off of her first engagement.

But the decisive point is that Rahel's blood is
the blood of a Jewish woman, and that this blood
is not only made strong by the best qualities of
the race, but at the same time heavy by its most
grievous misfortunes.

Jakob Wassermann, in whom the conscious- .
ness of his race is deeper than in any other Jewish
writer of our time, has maintained in an essay on
Rahel1 that "the melancholy intensity and painful

1 Der Tag, March 24, 1904.

Origin 13

shyness, " that Rahel herself suffered from, belong
to her as the prototype of the modern Jewish
woman of culture; that love of humanity was
intensified in her by a mysterious feeling of in-
debtedness; that her enthusiasm becomes ecstasy,
that her measure is excess ; that her devotion has a
fervour that completely embraces, nay, is fused
with its object.

Wassermann in this passage accentuates rather
the weaknesses of the Jewess's disposition. I
have often had the opportunity of admiring its
great qualities.

Every one knows — and many acknowledge —
the intellectual gifts, creative force, thirst for
knowledge, and persevering, clear-sighted energy
of the Jewish people. But too little is said of the
qualities which nevertheless appear most char-
acteristic to those who have seen Jewish women
and men at close quarters: their strength in love,
their sense of fraternity, their helpfulness and
self-sacrifice. It was not an accident that Jesus
came of the Jewish people. The attempts now
made to prove that he was an Aryan are a waste
of labour for those who — as in my case — have more
readily found his qualities in those of Jewish than
in those of Germanic descent.

14 Rahel Varnhagen

Rahel possessed all the merits of her race, but
in a special degree those just mentioned. The
deep, warm Oriental disposition, the passionate,
rich blood, no doubt found their greatest ex-
pression in her erotic experiences. But the Ori-
ental force of love appears in all her feelings: in
family affection, in friendship, in her worship
of her great masters, in her motherliness. She
speaks on one occasion of the griefs of parents
and says that she can well understand them, for
"many realms of grief have I explored." That
warm, red blood, that strong, quick pulse, which
made her live in love and suffer through love all
her life, are racial characteristics, raised in her
to their highest power. Her race and her in-
dividuality combined made her surround the
object of her love, affection, friendship with great
devotion — even when she is aware that her feeling
is exclusively nourished from sources of her own.
She was grateful so long as she could continue to
love, she, who had found one of the bitterest of
love's secrets to be that people not only do not
understand one another, but "do not love one
another at the same time." Rahel certainly
possessed self-esteem, a feeling to which she gives
expression as frank as it is justified. But in her,

Origin 15

as in others who, from one cause or another — an
unfortunate exterior, for instance, or a desposed
origin — have been injured times without number,
this self-esteem was, so to speak, theoretical; it
did not gush forth spontaneously, it sufficed
neither for due self-assertion in everyday life nor
for the uncompromising attitude necessary in
exceptional cases.

" Two unutterable faults I have," says Rahel in
reference to the bas-relief of her by F. Tieck.
This, and another portrait, she found very like,
but both were distasteful to her, since she saw in
them these two faults clearly expressed :

"Too much gratitude, and too great a regard for the
human countenance. ... I should sooner be able
to grasp my own heart and wound it than injure a
human face or look at one that had been injured.
And I am too grateful, seeing that fortune has been
against me and my first thought is always of repaying
evil with good.

"All this results from bountiful, careless nature's
having given me -one of the most delicate, highly
organised hearts in the world, which, however, is not
seen, since I have no personal amiability. ..." "I have
many gifts but no courage, not that courage which
might set my gifts in motion, not that courage which
might teach me to enjoy life, even at another's ex-
pense. I rank the personality of others higher than

1 6 Rahel Varnhagen

my own; I prefer peace to enjoyment and have there-
fore never known the latter."

But one need not be a Jewess to make the ex-
perience that consideration and thoughtfulness,
forbearance and kindness do not result in others
behaving to us as we to them, if these qualities
are combined with disinterestedness in what con-
cerns one's self. The unassuming person is passed
by, while the exacting and inconsiderate teach
others to show circumspection and tact — that is
an experience which all races will confirm. When
Rahel's family once gave her a Christmas present
that was both useless and ugly, and they excused
themselves .by saying that "it was so difficult to
find anything for her, " who was thankful for the
smallest kindness and provided herself with as little
as possible, Rahel broke out into lamentations
over her own lack of charm, to which she also
ascribed her capacity to assert herself gracefully.

One of Rahel's friends, W. von Burgsdorf, says
with profound understanding of her nature, that
he at once learned not to take her literally; that
behind her words, which often seemed stronger
than their occasion, he soon found that she must
have been brought up in a long grief.

"For, it is true, a trace of the destiny you

Origin 17

have gone through is visible in you; one notices in
you the early acquired silence and concealment.
. . . Every scar that fate has left on the charac-
ter disturbs your consciousness. ..." But he
added with perfect truth: "The same force which
strives to go to the bottom of pain, in you returns
with equal grace to joy. You are so full of easy,
glorious life."

But this long grief was neither exclusively nor
even primarily due to her Jewish birth. That
she was so much more vulnerable, shy, easily dis-
couraged, unpretending than other Jewesses of
her circle, depended on the circumstances which
determined her childhood and youth.

Rahel herself indicates the suffering of her child-
hood and youth when she speaks of the strong
heart nature had given her, but which her "hard,
strict, violent, capricious, gifted, almost insane
father overlooked and broke — yes, broke. De-
stroyed all my capacity for action, without, how-
ever, being able to enfeeble my character. " And
thus she also lost the "courage to be happy"
which nature had given her.

Of this father, the banker Levin-Markus — his
children afterwards adopted the name of Robert —

1 8 Rahel Varnhagen

there is a portrait in Berlin which shows in-
telligence, love of pleasure, an outward bent of
mind, and harshness. The cane he holds in his
hand was the sceptre he wielded over his family.
For at that time the authority of the head of the
family was a dogma that had not yet been attacked
either in Christian or Jewish homes. But here it
must be added that the father was personally a
despot, who demanded unconditional subser-
vience from those about him, and neither tolerated
an independent will nor a contradictory opinion.

And under the rule of this father Rahel grew up,
the leading characteristic of whose nature was a
most pronounced independence!

Among her father's numerous decrees was one
that no birthdays were to be kept in the family.
Thus all Rahel knew about hers was that she was
born on Whitsunday, 1771, and that it fell in
May ; her biographers have ascertained that in that
year it was May iQth. She was the eldest child
and was so extremely delicate and weak that at
first she lay wrapped in cotton-wool in a box. To
strengthen her body by suitable remedies was an
idea that no more occurred to her parents than to
others of the time. One illness after another
attacked her susceptible frame during childhood,

Origin 19

and this susceptibility persisted throughout life
as a part of her sufferings. But also of her
joys. For the delicate organisation, which caused
her to sicken from a breath of air and recover
in a sunbeam, implied at the same time that
extreme sensitiveness to all mental impressions
whereby her enjoyment was multiplied. This
susceptibility, this Reizbarkeit, in Lamprecht's
extended meaning of the word, involved none
of that want of consideration, that lack of self-
control, which people of the present day desig-
nate and excuse by the elastic expression "nerves."
Rahel had perhaps to thank the strictness of
her home for her rare self-control, in part di-
rectly, and in part through its evoking her
powers of resistance. To live in spite of all and
to live a life rich in meaning, not to allow her
suffering to be remarked by those about her, it was
to this that Rahel directed from her earliest years
the strength of will she had inherited from her
race in general and from her father in particular.

For this energy of self-preservation, which was
increased by her ill-health, she had full use in the
still harder fight for her personal independence
against this father, whose outbursts of anger,
unreasonable commands, scornful address, and

20 Rahel Varnhagen

brutal assaults made the whole family tremble.
Rahel alone ventured now and then to oppose him.
Her incorruptible love of truth, her indomitable
independence were regarded by her father as
defiance and obstinacy, faults which he tried to
break, with the same enjoyment as a cannibal
breaking human bones. One shudders at the
thought of the ill-treatment the girl, equally sen-
sitive in mind and body, had to undergo, an ill-
treatment which she summed up in the words :

"A more tortured youth cannot be experienced;
no one can be more ill or nearer to madness. "

Every child that, from one cause or another,
has grown up in harsh surroundings, bears through
life the consequences of the first years of its life.
So also was it with Rahel. During these years
she suffered so much that, according to her own
words, she ought to have exhausted all her possi-
bilities in this direction! She sees that the lack
of charm by which she means candour, self-
confidence, ease of manner — of which she is so
bitterly aware, has its origin in this childhood of
ill-treatment and oppression, for life is kind to
those whose "earliest conditions of life have been
blessed." And it is true that such people ap-
proach life with confidence, while those who have

Origin 21

been unhappy in childhood stand awkwardly and
timidly when happiness stretches out its hand, as
though they lacked courage to conquer a place for
themselves or strength to keep that which they
have chanced to win. Rahel's early youth seems
to have been made still more difficult through
the father being proud of the gifts his daughter had
inherited from himself, of the remarks by which she
soon attracted attention in his select social circle.
His own brilliant intelligence and keen wit brought
him and his house into request, and he wished to
gain in his daughter a reinforcement of his own
influence. Rahel herself says that up to her
fourteenth year she was witty and thus fell under
the suspicion of her Jewish circle — a remark which
implies that she was witty at the expense of others.
With adolescence we may suppose that she began
consciously to criticise her father's way of using
his wit, and thus commenced the tacit or open
struggle not only between their wills, but between
their souls. He wished to stamp his daughter
in his own image, that of the external and bril-
liant man of society. But this attempted mould-
ing may have been the very thing that awakened
Rahel's self-consciousness both to the temptations
she ought to avoid and the ideal she wished to

22 Rahel Varnhagen

pursue. The disgust her father and his whole
nature inspired in her burned away all possibility
of frivolity, of superficiality, and turned her mind
inward, in the certainty that only by lonely paths
could she find and preserve her essential ego.

Goethe says somewhere that "persistence and
directness of aim" are properties that are found
even in the most obscure Jew. When these
properties are united to a rich material for person-
ality, they produce the wholeness, unity, coa-
lescence which Rahel recognises in herself — and
others in her — as that which separates her from
other people in the most distinctive way. "All
my life I have only considered myself as Rahel
and nothing else," she said once, expressing sur-
prise at the attention that was shown her during an
illness. But she became Rahel in that "furnace of
affliction" from which her personality proceeded
as though cast in bronze and her will like hardened
steel.

Rahel calls it a gift of God that she always
knows what she wants, although in spite of her
strength of will she has been "abused and shouted
down and thwarted" — a thing which nevertheless
concerns only the periphery of her existence.

Her strength of will not only sustained her in

Origin 23

spite of ill-health but multiplied her powers when
they were required for others, as nurse, for in-
stance. But she derived yet another charac-
teristic, important in daily life, from her race:
the practicalness, presence of mind and organi-
sation which gave her power over the multitude of
little, everyday tasks, constantly tending to chaos.
This rapid and practical sense of actuality, which
is the secret of the Jewish people's success, was
enhanced, through Rahel's rich nature, in her
to a beneficent development of an eternally fresh
life, "composed of nothing but real being," as
Varnhagen expresses it. Through order, tidiness,
neatness, and supervision, Rahel possessed that
grasp of daily life without which it never acquires
style or beauty.

Through these qualities she became not only
good, but really helpful. And this Oriental com-
bination of a sense of reality and mysticism is
found wherever the mysticism is deep. Nay, is it
not, so to spea^:, the actual characteristic of the
founder of religion and is it not by means of this
very characteristic that the Orient has given the
world all its great religions?

The Germanic race and culture, in the midst of
which Rahel grew up, undoubtedly contributed to

24 Rahel Varnhagen

deepen her nature, to give it greater diversity.
But the invincibility of its individuality, the in-
destructibility of its fire, the lightning rapidity
of its clearsightedness, the profundity of its medi-
tation, the keenness of its analysis, the wildness of
its despair, the jubilation of its gratitude, — all these
are as Eastern as the Psalms and Ecclesiastes.

After her father's death in 1789, Rahel's life
become easier. Freed from daily suffering, her
health, through a "successful revolution," also
improved. She felt an inclination for the pleasures
of youth, and even learned to dance — but soon
had enough of dancing as a social amusement.
In the attic under the paternal roof she had plenty
of time and leisure for her inner development.
But within the family circle there remained,
amongst other things, the authority inherited by
the brothers from the father over the female
members of the family, which to Rahel was espe-
cially onerous in questions of money, where, more-
over, her mother's parsimony in daily life was more
disagreeable than her brother's acquisitiveness.

Her mother seems to have been an insignificant
woman, broken down and made melancholy by
her husband's tyranny, and Rahel's nature met

Origin 25

with no appreciation from her. Of the others,
her sister, Rose, may have been on cordial terms
with Rahel, though without any very profound
community of souls. Such a community, how-
ever, united her to her younger brother Ludwig —
her "Herzensbruder" — who, himself an author,
introduces her into the society of young poets in
Berlin after 1800. The elder brothers again,
Moritz and Marcus, are absorbed in financial in-
terests, and although in this particular they be-
have well to their sisters, they have inwardly little
in common.

And Rahel seems to be prepared not to meet
with appreciation in the family circle. What she
asks is that she may be left in peace. But as usual
her mother, brothers, and sisters, even after Rahel
had become the celebrated Rahel, saw in her only
the daughter and the sister, on whose strong Jew-
ish family affection they could always rely, when
they needed it in sickness or trouble, sorrow or
anxiety. Between whiles they misinterpret, ad-
monish, and disapprove with the right of indelicacy
which members of a family regard even to-day as
their most indisputable privilege in dealing with
one another.

Rahel breaks out to a friend:

26 Rahel Varnhagen

" I am made ill by embarrassment, by constraint,
as long as I live. I live against my will. . . . My
everlasting dissimulation, my circumspection, my
compliance are wearing me out. I cannot endure it
any longer, and nothing and nobody can help me."
" / have been spared no blow, no stab, no thrust, or sting,'1
she says in the connection.

It may be presumed that Rahel, like most
strong natures, suffered for a very long time be-
fore something, trivial in the eyes of the others,
made her break out. She says herself: "Few
are more explosive than I: I can keep it in for a
long time, but sooner or later it has to come out. "
Probably she could be hasty, rough, and un-
reasonable with her own people, as with Varn-
hagen, in questions where, against them as against
him, she was nevertheless right in the main. Like
others, she had les defauts de ses qualites.

On the whole she shows by her actions how deep
her family feeling is.

She writes to her family :

"Do I not tell you everything? Do I ever allow
myself any rest before you have had all the intellect-
ual, agreeable, social, and other news I can get? Have
I ever said I? Do I not always say we ? — and God
knows how incessantly I think it ! I am no hardened
egoist, but a joyful and sensitive expander of life."

Origin 27

Rahel has a need of worshipping, of looking up
to people.

" I cannot speak of him — for I can only be
just," she says on one occasion. "With my
nature I have been sufficiently revenged, if I can
no more love." She always believes in a person
from the first. "It is one of my estimable stupi-
dities always to take people seriously," she says.
"My only talent is being able to see things on a
large scale, my only pleasure — and only levity —
being able to forget myself," she writes on another
occasion. And of these talents those about her
also had the benefit.

But it was precisely her quality of "life-
expander" that above all displeased her timorous
and narrow-minded mother, who had diffused
about herself a cool and musty spiritual atmos-
phere. Rahel's love of her family was what she
herself calls "fibre-love, " the feeling which nature
intertwines with every fibre of our being and which
keeps its strength even when one has scarcely a
thought in common. When there was need of it
she could sacrifice for them time, strength, money,
pleasures, and their real interests went "right to
the bottom of her heart." But to their petti-
ness and narrowness she would not yield. The

28 Rahel Varnhagen

criterion that her family circle had imposed upon
itself was the point of view Rahel hated: "What
was fitting and proper." According to this valua-
tion the trivial became great and the significant
of small account. When Rahel was herself — dar-
ing, animated, sparkling, unprejudiced — the least
of her relatives assumed a right to preach to
her of duty, consideration, moderation, and
prudence !

Meanwhile indignation accumulated within her.
And when her "heavily charged store of ideas
found an outlet, " it is evident that she caused
consternation by the passionate force of her
opinions; that she was considered overbearing and
domineering, or any other of the words that are
used about people of strong convictions by those
who are incapable of a strong conviction. But
all those, on the other hand, who themselves had
views, found Rahel delicately sensitive, tactful,
forbearing, tolerant of everything but pretentious
stupidity, slander, and lying in all its forms —
whether more or less conscious, more or less
impudent.

When Rahel takes a schoolgirl's delight in
driving with an opera singer to a dress rehearsal on
the Sabbath, one can understand how the pressure

Origin 29

of Jewish customs came to the aid of that of the
family.

On the whole, however, Rahel's relations with
her brothers remained good. And when she ex-
claims that "they neither regarded her nor loved
her," these words must not be taken absolutely,
but only relatively to Rahel's own capacity for
devotion.

With her mother, on the other hand, her rela-
tions became finally so strained that she insisted on
Rahel's leaving the paternal house in Jagerstrasse,
which in spite of all had become dear to her, where
the mother then lapsed into "her dismal, thread-
bare, uncomfortable solitude," in "pitiful miserli-
ness. " But Rahel, thus exiled, visited her mother
daily, although the latter received her with the
greatest indifference, until in 1809 her mother lay
on her death-bed and for four months Rahel
nursed her day and night. The approach of death
dispersed the many misunderstandings which had
concealed the daughter's real nature from the
mother. The grateful love her mother now at
last showed Rahel, as well as the courage with
which she bore her sufferings, made Rahel tend
her with a "passionate pain." But Rahel no
more altered her relation to her than to her father:

30 Rahel Varnhagen

they had each had their share in the sufferings of
childhood and youth under which her heart had
groaned, and Rahel did not forget. But while she
could never forgive her father, she forgave her
mother, since she had been the father's victim as
much as Rahel herself.

The sufferings that had only darkened her
mother's narrow nature, kindled in Rahel's a
great light: that of sympathy; and gave her a
great strength: that of solitude. The power of
introspection and absorption that solitude, and
only that, can give, had a determining effect on
Rahel's nature. However much she may after-
wards become a woman of society, she yet lives,
until Varnhagen appears, in a perpetual inner
solitude as a consequence of the circumstances of
which she says that through them her life has been
murderously taken from her.

In a letter to Varnhagen, Rahel says :

" This week I have thought out what a paradox is : a
truth which has not yet been able to find room to re-
veal itself, which violently thrusts itself into the world,
and is twisted out of joint in the process. ... So am
I, unfortunately, and this will be the death of me.
Never can my soul gently glide into fair undulating
motions .... How truly, beloved friend, and how

Origin 31

sadly do you compare me with a tree that has been
pulled up out of the earth and then had its top buried
therein. Nature has designed me too strong."

And just as the peculiar force of Rand's thought
can only be understood as the result of solitude, so
must her peculiar tone of feeling be understood as
derived from suffering.

Rahel belonged in a spiritual sense to that class
of persons who are called in a physical sense
"bleeders." A scratch, which in another person
would easily heal, may in them occasion prolonged
bleeding, and the film over a wound is so thin
that it breaks at the slightest shock and causes
a fresh flow of blood.

No one who does not perceive this can ever un-
derstand Rahel, when she uses the strongest words
about sufferings long past or when she is painfully
distressed at what seems to others a trifle.

For with this little wound all her other wounds
are opened, and in this complaint are echoed all
the lamentations of her people.

Whether or no Rahel perceived what she had to
thank her race for, it is certain that the bitterness
with which in youth she speaks of her birth, dis-
appears with time. Perhaps this was simply due

32 Rahel Varnhagen

to the growth of that amor fati, which is to the
human being what flowering is to the aloe, the
great feat of strength before death ?

"I no longer envy anybody anything but such
things as no one has" — these words of Rahel's
are significant of her state of soul in the last years
of her life.

Rahel had always been willing to acknowledge
her descent. Indeed, in Paris she laid stress on
the fact that she was a Jewess from Berlin, and
rejoiced that she did honour to her native city.
So also did she rejoice when, during the war,
she could manifest the patriotic self-sacrificing of
the Jews in her own person and through her co-
religionists. That on her marriage she went over
to Christianity was neither a defection from
Judaism, which she had never embraced as a
believer, nor an act of faith as regards the
Christian religion, but only the drawing of a sign
of equation between herself and the man whose
position in life she was to share. When the patri-
otic fever that succeeded the Napoleonic wars
evoked manifestations of anti-Semiticism, she was
deeply ontraged and expressed to her Christian
friends her detestation of this brutality. The
more she learned, freed from dependence on her

Origin 33

own relatives, to look upon Judaism objectively,
the more was she reconciled to the fate that made
her a member of that nation. And on her death-
bed, when she finally saw her whole life from the
point of view of eternity, she praised in affecting
words the destiny which had made her, the fugitive
from Egypt and the land of Canaan, so beloved
and cared for by her dear ones.

" In solemn transport I think of this origin of mine,
and of the whole interconnection of destinies through
which the oldest memories of the human race are
associated with the present state of things, and thus
the forms most widely separate in time and space are
connected with each other. That which for so long a
period of my life appeared to me the greatest igno-
miny, the bitterest suffering and misfortune, namely,
being born a Jewess, I would not now renounce at
any price."

3

CHAPTER II

PERSONALITY

IN Rahel's, as in every other pronounced person-
ality, one can point to certain component parts by
which the race and the family have contributed to
its composition ; one can even divine the process of
moulding. But the means by which just this
personality results from these component parts and
from the treatment which in others would have
produced quite different forms — that remains the
eternal riddle. The individual features of the
personality, its peculiar style, its unique charm,
can no more be described or grasped in dealing
with the living work of art — a consummate
personality — than in dealing with the statue of
bronze. Not only the work of art, as Kellgren
has said, has "sprung from the womb of a glowing
imagination": the individuality too springs from
such a womb, that of Nature herself. Her imagi-
nation works as mysteriously as that of genius, and

34

Personality 35

her style it is equally impossible to catch in the
scant, grey meshes of words.

Several of Rahel's most eminent contemporaries
have attempted to describe her personality. The
most successful among them were probably those
who approached most nearly to her own self-
analysis. For if it can be said of any one that she
really knew herself, then that person is Rahel. In
the whole world of women there is no one who can
be better compared with Rahel in courage and
inclination for exploring her own soul, in zeal of
self-examination, and candour of self-revelation,
than Marie Bashkirtseff. For there is need to
remind certain modern authors of feminine con-
fessions that shamelessness is not synonymous
with candour, nor communicativeness with know-
ledge of self.

Rahel's letters, published after her death, were
to her contemporaries a revelation of a new type
of woman in the same degree as Marie Bashkirt-
sefFs Journal was to our time. However differ-
ent their natures may be at times, they are alike
in this, that their life of the soul and will is so indi-
vidual, so marked, and that it revealed itself so
directly and so consciously, that it became at once
a spiritual power with which one was brought into

36 Rahel Varnhagen

relation, sympathetically or antipathetically, but
indifference to which was impossible.

For the rest, the manner of the two self-portraits
is as different as the times in which they appeared.
The young Russian paints herself en plein air, in
a pitiless, all-revealing morning light; Rahel's
picture appears in a chiaroscuro, in which the
longer one looks the more one discovers.

In attempting to reproduce my impression of
Rahel's personality I am reminded of her own
words : that we see ourselves in concave but others
in convex; that when we try to penetrate and judge
a person, we encounter ourselves, and this makes
true objectivity impossible. "For the resem-
blance," Rahel concludes, "that exists between
persons, extends only to the outer limits of their
being."

As one cannot reproduce one's impression of a
personality directly, one tries to do so by means
of images. Thus, for instance, I may say that to
me Rahel has the same deep purple, almost black
tint as Eleonora Duse; that the perfume which
comes nearest to her nature is that of the yellow
narcissus, while the music which expresses her
most perfectly is Beethoven's Appassionato,. But

Personality 37

in these images I have at the most given an idea of
my conception of Rahel to those who receive from
this tint, this perfume, and this music impressions
of the same tone of feeling as my own.

For in relation to the great, mystical reality —
the unique personality — the image is as the
Egyptian hieroglyphic sign for life in relation to
living life itself.

There is only one objective way of drawing a
marked individuality: to compare the person's
own utterances and actions with the impression
his personality produces on contemporaries. For
a person's own words often deceive one, his actions
not unfrequently, other's opinions more often than
all. But if all three agree, one can be certain that
in the particular case, the unity and cohesion of
the personality at least are beyond doubt.

And it is precisely this agreement between the
impression Rahel produces on others and the in-
sight she gives us into her own nature, which
justifies the conclusion that she was what she says
she was, and that one can best form her image
from her own confessions.

What Rahel always and before all else lays stress
upon is that "God and Nature" meant well with

38 Rahel Varnhagen

her but that destiny and fortune have been against
her ; that nature was proud, nay, overbearing, when
she came into the world; that she ought to have
been "high-bom," and that the exuberant powers
of happiness she possessed within her only re-
quired a little exemption from direct suffering to
show their strength. She knows that she is fash-
ioned to enjoy life, not merely to undergo it,
and it is this source of light in Rahel's nature
— its healthy, beautiful sensuousness, its desire
of sunshine, its "joy over what lies nearest,"
its delight in the happiness of all who are happy
— which gives Rahel her direct warmth. And
it is only with this vital energy as the founda-
tion of one's being that a really deep suffering
is thinkable; a vital energy that rebels against
its torments, that is by turns vanquished and
victorious but never acknowledges pain as the
meaning of life. Rahel calls herself a "fresher,
gayer, more brunette Hamlet, " and Veit, the friend
of her youth, says that with "Philine's gay dis-
position she combined Aurelia's genius and heart,
her goodness and tendency to melancholy." . . .
All who have profoundly understood Rahel, above
all Varnhagen, lay stress on what I would call the
chiaroscuro in her nature as the secret of its charm.

Personality 39

In a letter from Jean Paul to Rahel, which begins
with the words: "Winged one! — in every sense" —
he says: "You treat life poetically and consequently
life treats you in the same way. You bring the lofty
freedom of poetry into the sphere of reality, and expect
to find again the same beauties here as there. " . . .

This judgment reaches the core of Rahel's nature
It is this pristine character of Rahel's that she
feels ought to have been her fate. But her fate,
from the causes mentioned later, was a different
one. She cannot live according to her character,
but at least she dies according to it, as she says
every one really does. She knows that every
human being "has his altogether special fate,"
since he is "a moment of the whole, which can
only exist once"; and she demands of existence at
least her own special unhappy fate, since it has
not given her the happy fate.

Thus she wrote during the cholera at Berlin: "I
claim a special, personal fate. I cannot die of an
epidemic like a straw among other ears of corn in the
open field, scorchejd by marsh-gas. I will die alone of
my malady; this is /, my character, my person, my
physique, my fate. "

And every one has his fate, Rahel thought, since
every one has his individuality. Originality, she
says, is much more common than frankness; in-

40 Rahel Varnhagen

deed, most people might be original if they would
only be true! Of herself she can bear witness —
without any one having challenged her — that she
has devoted herself to a god, Truth, and that each
time she has been saved in the misery of life, it has
been through this divinity.

There is no subject to which she returns more
often in her letters than originality, and where it
existed she forgave almost anything. "He who
honestly asks and answers himself, is always
occupied with realities and is constantly finding
things out. ... In order to be able to think,
honesty is above all necessary. ..." What she
hated most of all was pedantry, "for its origin is
inward emptiness, therefore it clings to forms. . . ."
A person who is not true, honest, and innocent can
neither be poet, artist, philosopher, human being,
friend, member of a family, man of the world, busi-
ness man, nor ruler. ... It is love of truth that
is wanting in us; that is the diseased spot of the
race, the cause of all our epidemics of the soul. . . .
It depends upon ourselves to become human be-
ings (i. e., original). But for this an infinite
courage is needed. ... "It does not matter at
all how one is, if one cannot be as one wishes. "

All these utterances denote the nature that gave

Personality 41

vent to itself in the following answer to Varnhagen,
where she playfully says that she ought to be re-
cast so as to be more tractable: "Then I should
spurt out of the mould ! "

"Some people have too little understanding to find
the truth within them, others no courage to acknow-
ledge it, and the great majority neither courage nor
understanding, but they wander and lie and grope or
stagnate through life even to the grave. "

Another time she exclaims: "I am beside myself!
For so we call it when the heart really speaks. "

Honesty is to her the necessary condition for keep-
ing one's youth: "When one is honest in one's
thoughts, one is true. And only in truth is health to
be found. He who has not this, grows old: wrinkles
alone do not make us old. "

Nay, Rahel assures us that downright, pure
brutality revives her, when she has been wearied
by insincerity!

To a young male friend (Bokelmann) Rahel
writes these profound words: "What makes the
mind and soul of man colder than inactivity? . . .
Think always ceaselessly! This is the only duty,
the only happiness. ..." And she goes on to
implore him, however often he may have thought
out a thing, never to cease from "ploughing through
it" afresh; never to allow any dear and honoured

42 Rahel Varnhagen

friends, not even herself, to seduce and master him
so that he forgets the duty of incessant mental
work. He must always have the courage to hurt
himself with questioning and doubts; to destroy
the most comfortable and beautiful edifice of
thought — one that might have stood for life —
if honesty demands it; to dare ceaselessly to
put such questions to himself as may shake to
their foundations all his relations to other people ;
never to allow himself to be lulled to sleep by
any system of morality established once for all,
protective and becoming; never to lapse into the
routine of custom in any respect and thus bar the
gates of his soul; constantly to remain mentally
restless, unquiet, and to remember her — Rafael's —
everlasting mobility and freedom, her strict, ever-
examining love of truth; not to allow himself to be
led astray by any one or anything into a belief or
imprisoned in a bond which will make him sigh
out his lif e as a duty ; not to prize anything merely
because it is old and bears a good name.

To Rahel herself this kind of honest thinking
and honest communication of the result was as
much a mental condition of life as breathing a
physical one. In the vital necessity of such honesty
lies its deepest significance as regards Rahel.

Personality 43

Every one thinks more or less for the benefit of
some particular belief, idea or feeling, and with-
holds from himself and others whatever conflicts
with this; Rahel, on the other hand, is, as she
says herself "innocent" in her thinking.

What Rahel loves in Angelus Silesius — that he
turns to God in innocent questioning, demands
no answer, makes no asseverations, but is capable
at the same time of "regretful renunciation" and
of being "a child's soul full of courage" — all this
may be said of Rahel herself. This childlike
quality of Rahel is accentuated also by her friends.
And this is just the condition that gives her
courage to speak out fully on everything, careless
as to the effect, naively profound like a child, to
which things established, sanctioned, and acknow-
ledged have not yet disclosed their trenched am-
buscades and barbed-wire entanglements, but
which moves fearless and unconstrained so long
as it is free from preconceptions, thinking for
itself and discovering itself. But such a child
Rahel remained all her life.

Rahel' s influence on her friends of the same age
takes especially that form which is shown in the letter
to Bokelmann, quoted above. The highly gifted
physician, David Veit, Rand's oldest male friend,

44 Rahel Varnhagen

speaks of how ready he was to be guided by Rahel,
for she did not wish to dominate him, although she
unconsciously did so through the power of the highest
human nature, through "her dear, princely soul. "

G. von Brinckman, who was a Swede by birth but
had been educated at a German university and ab-
sorbed the most refined culture of the time as a diplo-
mat at the capitals of Europe, is even in Rahel's youth
one of her most appreciative friends. He, like Veit,
ascribes to Rahel a profound influence on his develop-
ment. Brinckman said that he received from Ra-
hel's exhortations to "Geistesmut" an impression as
strong as if he had suddenly been transported to an
altogether new mental world. Rahel's mental force,
her independence, her certainty that "higher morality
is reached through higher liberty," all this trans-
formed his own point of view in many cases. "What
I had sought in vain in the wise and the pious:
undisguised truth, independence of thought, and in-
tensity of feeling; this came upon me as a holy
revelation in the garret of this extraordinary 'Selbst-
denkerin,'" says Brinckman. To look into her
"divinely beating heart," to cultivate the exchange,
of confidences with her, became to him a necessity,
passionate as a love, he says. In the presence of
wise men and princes he boasted of being Rahel's dis-
ciple, and during his whole life her influence on him
remained as "spiritually powerful and highly human"
as ever. The correspondence between Brinckman
and Tegn£r, published by Professor Wrangel, is an
important aid to our knowledge of the former.

Throughout her life, in a hundred different

Personality 45

passages, Rahel says that she has always known
that she neither could nor should possess anything
but herself; that she therefore confines herself to
"the strength of my own heart" and to "what my
mind shows me"; that she knew that only by
keeping within these bounds assigned to her by
nature was she powerful, in all else nothing.

Frequently, too, she speaks of "the great,
thorough-going connection between all my facul-
ties, the eternally indestructible connection and
ceaseless co-operation between my feeling and my
thought." On account of this she is able to say:
"I am as much alone of my kind as the greatest
manifestation here on earth. The greatest artist,
philosopher, or poet is not above me. We are of
the same element, of the same rank, and are
fellows." This is one of those utterances of
Rahel's that must be understood in connection
with her individuality described above. Any one
who interprets this quotation as boasting knows
nothing of the individuality's certainty of self,
as imperious as any other certainty.

Rahel's constant heralding of the value of
individuality would not have been worth much,
if she herself had not revealed it. From the
beginning of her life to its close, from the first to

46 Rahel Varnhagen

the last hour of each day, there never occurred
with Rahel what she calls by a happy expression
"life-pauses." We all recall hours and periods
that were not permeated by the essential life of
our personality; during which we allowed our-
selves to drift ; allowed the bowstring of our will to
slacken, or let another draw it tight, while we
acted, spoke, judged in a dozing condition of soul.
There is scarcely any great personality in whom
such pauses cannot be pointed out; in Rahel
never. Sorrowful or glad, ill or well, resting or
active, she filled the cup of the moment to the
brim with the fulness of her being. We receive
this impression from everything Rahel wrote and
from everything that was written about her.
That she lives in a "forest of people" no doubt
hinders her, like every other social being, from
extending her own branches as far as they could
reach. But it transforms her nature no more
than the beech, for instance, is transformed by the
surrounding pine forest. She is herself, though
not the whole of herself, as necessarily as is the
growing tree.

" Why should I not be natural? " Rahel exclaims. "I
could not affect anything better or more varied. "

Again: "Even if I stood before the guillotine, I

Personality 47

should not be able to say what I am. I am helpful
and I breathe, more than that I cannot remember. "

These two contradictory utterances are signifi-
cant. For Rahel's consciousness of her nature
and worth is as real as her unconsciousness, a
thing which only seems impossible to the un-
tutored in self-knowledge, but which is the dis-
tinguishing feature in all great, original natures.

Just because Rahel at every instant is in perfect
harmony, one quality balances the other; her
excitability does not become hysterical, her sensi-
tiveness sentimental, her wit ironical, her analysis
vivisection, her directness does not become licence
nor her consciousness a mirroring of self.

Thought and feeling, meditation and action,
seriousness and gaiety, everything with her is of a
piece; nothing contradicts or cancels, everything
confirms and intensifies the rest in this harmonious
nature. *

Rahel knew that the unconscious is the source of
strength in our nature. Thus she says, for in-
stance: "In proper, deep sleep the soul goes home

1 Schleiermacher, the connoisseur of personality above all
others, pointed out this very unity as Rahel's chief characteristic.
See Chapter VI, Social Life.

48 Rahel Varnhagen

and bathes in God's lake; otherwise it would not
be able to endure."

But at the same time Rahel knows that the
fundamental instinct of her being is the thirst for
lucidity. Her honest and keen-sighted self-analy-
sis tells her that this instinct in her is not merely
the universal one of human nature, but that with
her it is a self-defence : only by thinking over
things do the joints of her being hold together, so
explosive is the effect of personal experiences with-
in her. She cannot take anything calmly; every-
thing, so far as it has any power to affect her, is
"insuperably important." Indeed, she is un-
doubtedly right that she would have been near to
madness, if among her other passions she had not
had that of thinking over things, not only suffering
through them. Or, in other words, if in addition
to her other sorrows she had not had that of
thought.

"I must know, with regard to everything, how
it comes about and how it is: thus ever since my
childhood I have had the greatest desire to look at
corpses." . . .

"I should have been a very incomplete creature in
the eyes of all, if there had not existed in me a broad
conception of the nature of all things and that forget-
f ulness of the personal, without which the most gifted

Personality 49

people on earth and in every branch of knowledge
would not be gifted. "...

"From my youth up my inner life has been rich
and in accordance with truth. Nature acted keenly
and truly upon keen organs: it has given me a firm,
sensitive heart which always duly put life into all
other organs."

Again: "One. does not have such gifts as mine for
nothing: they have to be paid for! My keen appre-
hension, with its power of definition and analysis, the
great sea within me, my accurately adjusted, great
and deep connection with nature, in short, the light
amount of insight I have into it, which nevertheless is
of so great value — all this costs me a good deal. What
pangs, what uneasiness, what privations are neces-
sary to make anything sprout, and how I have to
prepare the soil!"

Rahel's childlike freedom from prejudice, al-
ready alluded to, shows itself most clearly in the
ethical sphere, where she revalues current pre-
judices with equal boldness and thoroughness.

She well knows

" that the need of morality continues, but also that the
conceptions of morality cannot remain unaltered. . . .
The present age is sick with such old imaginings. . . .
All existence is progressive, gains unceasingly in in-
tensive vision; in this way earthly life is raised and
that life which falls outside its bounds. The more
insight we obtain, the more we shall come into har-
mony with life itself. . . . Life is not a dead

4

50 Rahel Varnhagen

repetition but a development to insight and through
insight. ..."

But Rahel sees that this development is just what
is least of all permitted in the sphere of morals.
And thus existence is split into two parts, since
one does not with an easy conscience commit the
actions, the so-called "crimes," to which one is
driven by development.

"We ought to submit at once to being called
' wicked ' and taken to task, and yet we poor wretches
go on with our little morals and our little laws!
Sick Europeans I always call us in my own mind. ..."

One of Rahel's new ethical ideas was that per-
sonal liberty involved the right to end one's life
when one wished to suffer no longer. Against the
talk of self-conquest and patience in suffering
Rahel breaks out:

" Yet we cannot suppress our nerves and fibres, nor
our wishes; are these last alone to be unholy? Ought
we not to begin to regard them with the same pious
awe as other works of nature, nay, as expressions of
the deep craving within us to attain the right? I
know that there exists only one intolerable evil ; when
one has not satisfied this need and one's conscience
is therefore diseased."

During the last year of his life Heinrich Kleist

Personality 51

often visited Rahel, who suffered in his sufferings.
After his suicide Rahel disclosed already the most
highly developed modern views of such a "free
death" (Freitod), to use F. Mauthner's new word
for our new conception of this act. Rahel re-
joices that her friend "did not prefer the unworthy
part," and she knows that her understanding of
him is now the only way in which she can honour
his memory.

"I cannot bear that the unfortunate should drain
their sufferings to the dregs. ... Is every kind
of misfortune to be allowed to fall on me? Is any
wretched fever permitted to kill me, any block of
wood, any roof-tile, any piece of clumsiness, but not
myself? .... Courage it is and nothing else. Who
would not leave a worn-out, hopeless life, if he did not
dread the dark possibilities still more? Our liberation
from what is desirable is already accomplished by the
course of the world. "

But voluntary death should be the conscious
choice of a personality, not a precipitate act,
Rahel thinks. She knows that only through the
former do our so-called crimes become moral
acts. Thus she, the worshipper of truth, can say:
"Lying is fair, when we choose it, and an im-
portant item in our liberty; but degrading, when
we are driven to it. " She can say, in speaking of

52 Rahel Varnhagen

a highly developed person: "He is so far in ad-
vance with his ideas that it can no longer be a
question of whether he is good or not good : this lies
far beneath him. "

She knows that there exists a first innocence
which knows nothing of evil; a second, which has
reached the other side of good and evil, and she
says: "Innocence is beautiful; virtue is a plaster,
a scar, an operation. " She knows how little this
kind of virtue is worth: "People are all 'good'
but they are of no use for anything. "

She knows that personal morality is the most
responsible. She expresses a thought which is in
unison with one of George Eliot's: "Our actions
are the children of our minds. . . . However they
may turn out, we must put up with them; they
have so independent a life that they are able to kill
us. ... They have children in their turn and
become a whole race. "

But while George Eliot uses the most serious
ethical idea of the new age in order to inculate the
old morality, Rahel has the courage to set aside
the latter on important points.

It results from what has been said here that
Rahel may more rightly be called a pre-Nietzschian
than a romanticist. Like Nietzsche she practises

Personality 53

consideration for others, loyalty to duty, self-
discipline, but like him she demands a revaluation
of just those virtues which she practises, since
each has found by personal experience what
dangers to a fully human existence these virtues
may involve.

A virtue, says Rahel, may be a much poorer
thing than a passion, and "fulfilment of duty is
often nothing else than a form of punctiliousness
and officiousness ! " She abhors the doctrine that
patience in suffering is an unconditional virtue.
Courageously to grasp what one's nature passion-
ately demands was to her a greater virtue, and
she underlines, with the fullest agreement,
Goethe's words: "To be just in all things is to
destroy one's own ego.".

Rahel was too honest to believe that we can love
others as ourselves except in the case of a very
great and rare feeling. And she knew that her
own propensity for putting others higher than
herself was a weakness, not a virtue.

"Through my too great consideration, " says Rahel,
"I therefore am really destroying myself, who, strong
in many ways, was intended for other things by care-
lessly prodigal nature. So it is! Thus I must con-
tinue to die: I have already died many times. ..."

54 Rahel Varnhagen

In connection with these words she makes the remark
that she knows "something of the eagle's nature" is
indispensable for living one's life, but that she
unfortunately lacks this kind of nature.

When Rahel accuses herself of exaggerated con-
sideration for others, which prevents her from
living, in the full sense of the word, we must
remember that she always lays stress on her un-
qualified courage in the domain of ideas and
opinions. For no one's love will she ever sacri-
fice her "truer conviction," she says. And, as
F. Schlegel said of her, speaking of her holding
aloof from the numerous "brotherhoods" of the
time, she was "far too eminent a personality"
to be able to accept the slightest restriction of
her mental freedom.

When she accuses herself of cowardice, it is thus
exclusively in the sense that she has left her per-
sonal demands of life unsatisfied in cases where
their satisfaction would have involved a want of
consideration for others or for the accepted
morality.

In one respect the ethical ideals of Goethe, of
the romanticists, of Rahel, and of Nietzsche are in
complete agreement: in the feeling that genuine
morality first appears when one has found one's

Personality 55

own essential nature and acquired a good con-
science of living according to this essential nature.
But while the romanticists permitted a "living out
one's life," like certain disciples of Nietzsche in
our time — that is to say, where not the essential
but the accidental is the motive force — Rahel, like
Goethe, like Nietzsche, was convinced of the im-
portance of making one's choice between essenti-
ality and what is only coarseness or caprice,
accident or fashion, among our inclinations. Thus,
for instance, Rahel, like Goethe, disapproved of
the romantic trifling with marriage, the disso-
lution of which Goethe thought justified when
genuine feeling demanded it, but not on account of
fashionable tendencies in sentiment, tendencies in
which seriousness was absent even from passion.1
But, far more positively than Goethe, Rahel at

1 Moral fanatics now make use of some words of Goethe's on
the sanctity of marriage — words which were occasioned by the
frivolous divorces of the time — to represent him as a guardian of
the sanctity of marriage. That he dedicated the deepest feeling
of his life to a married woman and could only decide after a very
long time to legalise his own "free love" are facts, however, which
ought to free Goethe from the suspicion of having seen in mar-
riage the sole criterion of erotic morality, unless we would assert
that his life and his teaching were in direct opposition to each
other! But he who demanded that every function should be per-
formed seriously, regarded the function of marriage as serious,
and one for which he himself, according to his own words, was
unsuited and therefore unwilling to undertake.

56 Rahel Varnhagen

all periods of her life maintains the freedom of
love, and the fact that the romanticists, and
afterwards Young Germany, do the same has
nothing to do with her opinions in this respect.
She, like Rousseau, like Goethe, like the romanti-
cists, like Young Germany, draws her erotic
views from her own observation, from her own
soul and its power of loving personally and pas-
sionately: none of them is the others' teacher,
though the spirit of the age may give courage to
acknowledge these views and to act according to
them.

At every stage of her life Rahel asserts what I
would call the wisdom of the heart, assuming that
one really follows one's heart and does not create
any of those "simulacra," the paltriness of which
brings love's freedom into disrepute.

"The heart is entirely in darkness, entirely alone,
one might say, and it alone knows everything best.
Only by looking into it can one gain real insight, since
none of the confused lights of the world penetrate there
and since the heart, so to speak, takes its standard
from another world ; it has a yes or a no, nothing else. "

"The more I see and meditate upon the strivings of
this world, the more insane it appears to me day by
day not to live according to one's inmost heart. To
do so has such a bad name, because simulacra of it are

Personality 57

in circulation. . . . But pure as the seed-leaf of
an almond is the inmost, true desire : what is sensitive
is also holy!"

With Rahel as with the romanticists, Schleier-
macher above all, the demand for love's freedom
is a necessary consequence of the demand for
individualism, for originality in every manifesta-
tion of life, above all those in which the person-
ality reaches its highest expression: love, belief,
creation. Rahel insists that only when a person
follows his nature's inmost demands is he true to
himself, and only when he is true to himself is he
moral. She consistently applies this conviction
in her judgment of people who in their erotic re-
lations thus live according to their hearts. One
of her female friends declared that nobody under-
stood everything in the same degree as Rahel.
But this reservation must be added: where she
met with nature and truth. The artificial and
false found in her an incorruptible judge.

Those natures that are most readily charac-
terised by calling them pagan Hellenic, won
Rahel's unqualified love. Pauline Wiesel, who
enraptured men as the most perfect revelation
of Aphrodite, was and remained Rahel's dearest

58 Rahel Varnhagen

woman friend on account of the complete and
naive frankness with which she lived in accordance
with her pagan nature. When Pauline left her
husband, Councillor Wiesel, Rahel gave her com-
plete approval; her "strong heart was not made
to suffer," Rahel wrote. As the mistress of Prince
Louis Ferdinand, and of many others, Pauline
showed such inconstancy in her love, combined
with such innocence, such ease of conscience, and
such kindness, that she appeared like a Philine
brought to life. The strength and genuineness of
her nature inspired in Rahel not only unalterable
devotion, but admiration.

Pauline's Greek, or childlike, or godlike,
naivete in the question of love's freedom, a right
that appeared to her as incontestable as it did to
the gods of Olympus, was as unlike Rahel's own
conduct of life as possible. But Pauline, in
Rahel's opinion, had thus led a more fully human
existence than Rahel herself. Indeed, she com-
pares Pauline with herself: "Nature has dealt
largely with us both. . . . We are designed to
witness the truth in this world. ..." And
Rahel complains that she herself has only wit-
nessed the truth in the realm of thought, while
Pauline has had the courage and the good fortune

Personality 59

to be true in action also to her inmost nature.
Herself married at the time, Rahel gave the follow-
ing unqualified expression of her sympathy for
Pauline Wiesel: "She saw what I saw, understood
what I understood; we laughed, observed, ad-
mired, and despised in common. ..." She had a
feeling for "the confirming and understanding
existence in another. " And when she seemed de-
void of feeling, it was, says Rahel, "because she,
like myself, suffered from too deep a sympathy.
She and I," Rahel continues, "could be agitated
like no one else." She was an experimental,
warlike, "light-hearted, or rather light-lived
nature"; "/ never found any one deeper, truer, or
dearer.1" Rahel not only felt that she and Pau-
line both belonged in an exceptional degree to
"great, dark, bright Nature, who produces life
after life"; she even thinks that "nature intended
to make one being of us, but she had to make two. "
And, therefore, Rahel adds, in one of her offhand
utterances, which open up an infinite psycho-
logical perspective — "therefore she acts forme,"
that is, in those things where Rahel herself has not
had the courage and good fortune, while perhaps
Pauline felt that Rahel cultivated certain other
qualities on Pauline's behalf!

60 Rahel Varnhagen

Varnhagen, who felt hurt on Rahel' s behalf by
this comparison of herself with Pauline Wiesel,
insists that the latter was a double nature, while
Rahel's extraordinary power and charm depended
on the perfect unity of her nature. And in truth
Rahel's unity is of a kind rarely met with : genius,
disposition, instincts, co-operate and strengthen
each other, instead of being opposed to each other,
as is usually the case. But Rahel herself so often
laid stress on her dissatisfaction with the want of
harmony between her will and her courage for ac-
tion, that we must take her seriously and not praise
what she herself called her weakness: that she did
not dare what, in accordance with her inmost
nature, with the approval of her conscience, she
•wished. She knows that it is often "one's better
knowledge" that demands what society calls
"sin"; that it may be a greater sin to allow life's
possibilities of happiness to escape one or patiently
to drag along the mistakes of one's life.

It is no ascetic or Christian conviction that
hinders Rahel: it is the inborn resignation in her
blood, and in her race; it is her father's tyranny,
her physical weakness, the knowledge of her lack
of charm — Rahel thought her appearance insigni-
ficant and quite devoid of attraction — that to-

Personality 61

gether break down her vital courage. And when
once this is crushed, it is no more capable of flight
than a broken wing. Rahel, like all great natures,
was born self-sacrificing and exacting. That she
had full opportunity for satisfying the first-named
instinct never consoled her for the great debt life
owed her. For she was convinced that her whole
nature was "willed by God," and that thus her
demands were as holy as her desire of self-sacrifice.

Pauline Wiesel is certainly the most decisive
evidence of Rahel's attitude to love's freedom, but
there are many other examples. Among them
the Bohemian, Countess Josephine Pachta, whose
blonde beauty and brisk amiability made her seem
like a kindly force of nature, a sunny child of the
woods. This friend became even dearer to Rahel
when she threw away her brilliant external posi-
tion to follow Meinert, the object of the love which
thus made her sacrifice position and reputation.
When Rahel is summing up the most significant
impressions she'has received from women, she calls
Josephine Pachta the greatest female character
she has known, since nothing could restrain her
from acting according to her inmost nature.

When Dorothea Mendelssohn was separated

62 Rah el Varnhagen

from her husband and lived for a number of years,
before they could be legally united, in a free re-
lationship with F. Schlegel, Rahel stood faithfully
by them. A fourth of Rahel's friends, the actress
Augusta Brede, lived in a free relationship with
Count Bentheim. Rahel not only approved of her
friend's conduct but stayed with her during her
visit to Prague.

But on the other hand Rahel could not reconcile
herself to the erotic-aesthetic flirtations of Henri-
ette Herz, which never overstepped the bounds
of "virtue," but exhibited just that kind of
"simulacrum" which was antipathetic to Rahel
while she declares, and proves in her friendships,
that "I am indescribably fond of genuine frivolity ! "

Among men also Rahel admired natures of the
same kind as Pauline Wiesel's. Her favourites
were, for instance, Prince Louis Ferdinand1 and
Gentz. The former visited Rahel's garret to find
a sympathetic, consoling friend, whose friendship
appeared to him "much sweeter than anything

T The erotic colour given to Rahel's relations with the prince
by Fanny Lewald, in her novel Prince Louis Ferdinand, is entirely
fanciful and without any foundation in fact. Rahel herself calls
the relationship "almost entirely impersonal." It was to Rahel
he complained of his inconstant mistress, Pauline Wiesel, and
Rahel had the thankless task of trying to put matters straight
between them.

Personality 63

else. ' ' Rahel perceived his ' ' disorderliness ' ' while
at the same time she loved his exceptional soul
and kept her promise of giving him direct "gar-
ret-truths" when he required them. Rahel la-
mented that their correspondence was lost, for
it did credit to both : to her by the perfect frank-
ness with which she told the prince home-truths,
to him by the generosity with which he received
them, feeling that the "little one," as he called
her, always appealed to what was finest in his
soul against his lower nature.

With regard to Gentz Rahel shows the same
clear perception of his many faults and the same
predilection for his inmost personality.

In this statesman and man of the world, so
differently judged, usually condemned, Rahel had
discovered a genuine "child's mind" with "the
untroubled, pure truthfulness that produces last-
ing naivete." It was this disposition that Rahel
loved unalterably in this man, who was wanting in
character just because he was like a child; a care-
less creature of the moment, who showed all his
weaknesses with the most perfect frankness. Wo-
men excused them on account of his charming
manners, men on account of his rich gifts, among
which was his tactful way of making other people

64 Rahel Varnhagen

appear to advantage. Thus, for example, he
would only take up the thread of conversation
after an interval of silence and hesitation and
modest attempts to get a word in, and then, as
one of the most brilliant conversationalists of his
time, would spin it farther, fine as silk and varied
in colour, as no one else could. Rahel, too, for-
gave him on account of this quality, which one
may call as one pleases either lack of conscience, or
freedom of conscience, or ease of conscience !

Rahel was to Gentz, as to Prince Louis, a mother
confessor, a consoler, an oracle. He has the same
profound understanding of her nature as she of his.
Nothing is more characteristic of both than their
letters at the time when Gentz, late in life, fell in
love with the dancer Fanny Elsler with a young
man's fervour. Rahel congratulated him in the
warmest words on being still capable of such fine
feelings at his age ! While others had nothing but
frivolous raillery for Gentz's passion, Rahel saw so
deeply into his nature that she compared his feel-
ing with her own for a child, that had proved her
still to be possessed of " ein Liebherz," capable of
all the pangs and joys of love. It throws light on
them both when Gentz writes that Rahel was the
only one to whom he dared to confess the feeling

Personality 65

which from an old man had made him young
again, since she alone was deep enough to see in it
the proof "that he had preserved within himself
a pure and real humanity." And among the
"floods of blessings" for his "paradisiacal letters, "
which flow from Rahel's heart to his, we find the
words, that in the eternal youth of feeling, above
all in the power of love, unvanquished even by
years, lies the strongest proof of immortality:
"Well formed hearts can always be in love and al-
ways wish to be. " This is Rahel's final word on
the subject of the love of Gentz's old age. And
when Fanny Elsler came to Berlin, Rahel treated
the young dancer, who was a mistress of the art
Rahel so much admired, as a daughter.

Whether a love is called by the world unreason-
able or reasonable, immoral or moral, unhappy
or happy, matters nothing to Rahel in compari-
son with the conviction which she expresses some-
what in these words : that loving is the state of life
that makes our days rich, bright, and full of mean-
ing; that only through love does one learn to know
one's own existence; nay, that love is to such an
extent the kernel of life that even a semblance of
it is capable of awaking our sympathy.

Some one censured in Rahel's presence a

66 Rahel Varnhagen

woman who had begged a man for his love, even
calling it a disgrace. Rahel exclaimed : " It was stu-
pid, since it could do no good, but why disgraceful? "
Rahel continued the conversation and swore by
Heaven that never in her life had she controlled a
weakness. And how could one do so? she asks.
One's actions one can control, but one's heart,
"which is soft, which is of flesh and blood, how could
one turn it into brass? " How deeply the subject af-
fected Rahel is shown by the fact that immediately
after this conversation she had an attack of fever!
Another pagan nature for whom Rahel cher-
ished great affection was Heine. He had some of
the faults that Rahel particularly loved; some of
the qualities she valued highly, but also that ruth-
less "ego-morality" which she only forgave when
— as in Pauline Wiesel and Gentz — it was com-
bined with a genuine naivete. Heine lacked this,
for he suffered from an ambition in which Rahel
saw the cause of his want of balance, insincerity,
vanity, and capriciousness. Rahel finely sums up
her own highest ethical commandment, the com-
mandment of individualism, in a single word:
"Heine must become 'real'."1 Since he possessed

1 Rahel borrows the word "real" (wesentlich) from Angelas
Silesius's verse: " Mensch, werde wesentlich, " etc.

Personality 67

no depth or seriousness, he lacked coherence in
his personality and a synthetic view of exist-
ence, and this made Rahel uneasy. In spite of
these defects, which, owing to Rahel's frankness,
caused occasional periods of coolness in their
friendship, Heine remained her tenderly cher-
ished favourite, whom she believed in, whom she
consoled, and of whose fate she felt an anxious
foreboding.

From all this we may conclude that Rahel
carried out her first and greatest demand on others
as on herself, "to be true and upright," while at
the same time she insisted that this honesty does
not exclude, but on the contrary necessitates, that
self-cultivation without which no one arrives at
his essential nature. Like Goethe, she knows
that "man is a work of art . . . material, artist,
and workshop are within ourselves. How beauti-
ful each success seems to us, how hard the re-
verse!" She regarded the years of one's youth as
"the most virtuous, most beautiful, and easiest
set on fire, " and therefore she forgave youth "no-
thing bad, but a good many follies." She thinks
older people are profoundly unjust towards youth,
in expecting it to be wise without having yet had
the opportunity of "distilling the essence from the

68 Rahel Varnhagen

tree of life.'" For Rahel says in another place:
"Experiences are crude; their value is only that to
which we succeed in ennobling them." And be-
sides, what is the rationality of the elders? Sel-
dom wisdom, Rahel thinks with perfect justice,
but "usually only want of courage. "

It was, moreover, her experience that, however
a person may conduct himself, he nevertheless at
every stage of his life acts in the last resort accord-
ing to his character; that is to say, Rahel explains,
according to the sum and substance of his qual-
ity ; human beings like the air, move according to
eternal laws. And to "have character" means
to her merely to have courage, since this sets
the other capabilities in motion towards their
goal. Thus, while every one else called a Gentz
or a Pauline Wiesel deficient in character, to
Rahel they were characters ; their courage to act
according to the sum and substance of their
qualities rendered them, as others called it, faith-
less, untrustworthy, weak, but as Rahel called
it, sincere. Among the majority she found weak-
nesses equally plentiful, but with a good deal less
honesty !

It was honesty and naturalness that Rahel

Personality 69

looked for in vain in European sexual morality;
and it was on account of these deficiencies that she
demanded reforms so thoroughgoing that even
to-day they are called "destructive of society."

Freedom for love — which is morality — but war
against unchastity — which is sexual relation with-
out love — that is Rahel's fundamental idea, from
her young days in her lonely garret till the late
phase of her life, when George Sand is already
appearing like a streak of fire on the horizon.

Rahel's sense of liberty, sense of truth, and sense
of beauty are revolted in an equal degree by the
sexual morality that is protected by society.
Marriage is to Rahel an oppression, comparable
with other forms of compulsion; an oppression
that has given rise to the dual standard of male
and female sexual morality and the compulsory
fidelity in which the social lie triumphs. Rahel
touches upon this subject sometimes seriously,
sometimes in irony.

"It is hard that in Europe men and women should
form two different nations: one moral, the other not.
This will never answer — without dissimulation, and
chivalry was one form of dissimulation. These few
words are very true; they summarise much unhappi-
ness and much evil. Some day a book will be written
about this."

70 Rahel Varnhagen

"I now perceive that human beings are so wicked,
that they are obliged to make their declaration d' amour
before a priest and an official. They know one
another!"

"Is not an intimacy without charm or transport
more indecent than ecstasy of what kind soever? Is
not a state of things in which truth, amenity, and
innocence are impossible, to be rejected for these
reasons alone?"

On another occasion she says of marriage: "Away
with the walls! Away with the ruins of them! Let
this pernicious custom be levelled with the ground, and
then shall flourish everything that has life in it — a
whole vegetation ! "

She sums up the stains upon Europe in these words :
"Slavery, war, marriage — and they go on wondering
and patching and mending!"

Since the highest personal morality consists in
being true, in every smallest trifle and at every
moment, in "always proceeding from reality and
not from appearance," coercive marriage must be
the great social lie above all others!

Rahel asks: "How can an inclination subsist
without charm?" She asks why people do not
provide themselves with a legal, external guaran-
tee for their relations of friendship, private or
open, instead of allowing the duration of these
relationships to be determined by their feelings?
And on the objection about children she asks

Personality 71

whether home life as such is bound to be sacred?
Whether the children really can only be protected
by remaining in their home, when the parents are
capable of physically and morally torturing them
to death there?

She points out that it is as absurd as it is im-
possible and unreasonable to try by one's love
to bind and restrict a human being in any action
or at any point of his existence. Only those mar-
riages which are contracted through mutual love,
only those in which the free consent of both, not the
right of either, determines the union, only those
in which full, clear truth prevails, does Rahel re-
gard as moral. And above all, behind the "closed
doors" of matrimony the fullest freedom is a
necessity. How little Rahel believed in the possi-
bility of such freedom and truth in the existing
institution of marriage, appears from her ex-
clamation that those who are already married
must remain so, but that she for her part would
never be willing to sanction the marriage of a child
of hers. ShS scorns "preconceived opinions de
luxe" of all kinds, but especially those which
have created the distinction between legitimate
and illegitimate children, and she would level
this distinction as radically as those who are

72 Rahel Varnhagen

striving at the present day for the right of the
mother.

"Children ought only to have mothers and to bear
their name, and the mothers ought to be in possession
of the authority and power in the family : so nature
ordains it. We have only to make nature more moral ;
to act in opposition to her — even as regards the solu-
tion of the problem in question — is never successful.
Nature is terrible in this respect, that a woman can
be misused and can bear children against her incli-
nation and her will. This great injustice must be re-
dressed through human intervention and dispositions,
but it shows to what a great extent the child belongs to
the woman. Jesus had only a mother. For every
child an ideal father ought to be appointed, and every
mother ought to be considered as innocent and held
in as high honour as Mary. "

It is characteristic of Rafael's attitude to her own
sex that it was not among the blameless she, who
was herself perfectly blameless, found her closest
friends. And it is not from her own sex but
from men that the most discriminating judgments
of Rahel are derived. Rahel herself has no cause
to complain of a woman not being permitted to
think or to utter her thoughts, for she found
listeners both eager and admiring in the foremost
men of her time. Rahel uses a bad argument to
defend woman's right to use her intellectual powers,

Personality 73

when she asks whether Fichte's works would have
been inferior if Frau Fichte had written them ? For
this question could only carry weight if it were
proved that Frau Fichte — or any other woman —
actually had written Fichte's works. Then un-
doubtedly men would have been as willing to
acknowledge that woman's force of thought as
they acknowledged that of Rahel herself.

Fortunately it is not with such weak reasoning
that Rahel elsewhere defends woman's right to
make use of her intellectual gifts; to secure "room
for her own feet" legally and socially; to be res-
cued from having to occupy herself only with
trifles, and, in an intellectual sense, from having to
be "worn away by her husband's or son's exist-
ence"; from being forced, through her husband's
erotic coarseness, into insincerity and coquetry;
from being of less account owing to her bringing-up
and her existence.

Rahel says of women: "They are so surprisingly
feeble, almost imbecile from lack of coherence. They
lie, too, since they are often obliged to, and since the
truth demands intelligence. And lying bores me to
death. ..." Again: "I know women: what is
noble in their composition keeps together stupidity or
madness. ..." In a third place she speaks of
women's " clumsy, terrible stupidity in lying. "

74 Rahel Varnhagen

That women nevertheless even at that time
were able to find "room for their own feet, " if they
only had a strong enough will to do so, is proved
by Rahel herself. Without financial independence,
she nevertheless, when only in her twenties, suc-
ceeds in reading, corresponding, travelling, choos-
ing her friends, and forming her social circle with
the same freedom as a financially independent
woman can do so now. If Rahel, after her father's
death, still speaks of constraint, it is only in the
sense that unintelligent and indelicate criticism,
and a pretentious and irritable family circle are
always a constraint. At that time this constraint
was only exercised by the family; in our day it is
still exercised by the family and by societies and
other forms of social co-operation as well.

From every well-thought-out system of individ-
ualism— and Rahel's was as thoroughly thought
out as it was instinctive — it necessarily results that
any hindrance to the use of his powers imposed by
society upon one of its members is tyranny, so
long as the exercise of his powers involve no inter-
ference with the rights of others. And how much
more true is this, when laws and prejudices have
placed such hindrances in the way of half mankind !
As an individualist, therefore, Rahel is a "feminist "

Personality 75

with all her heart and turns her irony upon those
who, on account of preconceived opinions as to
woman's nature, seek to exclude her from the so-
called masculine spheres of work and thought.

"Has it been proved by her organisation that a
woman cannot think and express her ideas? If such
were the case, it would nevertheless be her duty to
renew the attempt continually. . . .

"So many women miss their true vocation, that it
can hardly make much difference if a few do so by
writing."

Rahel reproaches women — in her time there
was occasion for it — with humbly excusing them-
selves when they ventured to write a book ! Why
should not a woman write books, why should she
not study at the universities, if she has "the
intelligence and the gifts through which her studies
will be really fruitful? " Why should she not work
at the sciences, if she is capable of doing so? asks
Rahel with justice. But in our day Rahel might
have asked: Why must a woman write books,
study, practise science — even when she has not
"intelligence and gifts"? How Rahel, who ex-
horted every one to effect his own education, who
thought that nature intended with every human
being to produce an original, not a "manufactured

76 Rahel Varnhagen

article," would have abhorred the school exami-
nations and university courses of to-day, the fac-
tory work by which men and women are turned out
by the dozen!

How Rahel, who knew that the liberation of our
own true individuality "costs a whole life, full of
effort," would have detested present-day parlia-
mentarism and societies, administrations and com-
mittees, where the effort consists in suppressing
the personality for the sake of the so-called result !
How Rahel, who exclaims: "One spends one's
life in institutions — fritters it away!" — would
have detested the frittering-away of life that all
such modern institutions involve! How she would
have detested seeing the need of bread driving
women together with men in the great herd, which
only "desires and is quieted by food"! How she
would have detested all those "women of the
cause" who in our time confirm Rahel's observa-
tion "that insignificant people with little spirit
become harder with years, while an increasing gen-
tleness is the characteristic of the notable person
and of the mobile spirit " ! How Rahel would have
abhorred the tyrannical treatment of each other's
opinions, the cramping narrow-mindedness, the
envious jostling, the petty importance of nobodies,

Personality 77

which the women's cause now exhibits every-
where, since, from being a movement for liberty
in great women's souls, like Rahel's own, it has
become a movement of leagues and unions, in
which the small souls take the lead!

It was in the performance of motherly social
functions — nursing and relief of distress — that
Rahel desired to find "a regular occupation."
But no one would have been unhappier than
Rahel if this "occupation," as is the case with
organised co-operation, had fettered the freedom
of her own initiative and actions. And a Rahel
would be the first to assert now that there are
other limitations of liberty and independence than
those created by law and custom, namely those
that arise from fashions and tendencies of the age,
by which a person is carried away from his deepest
nature and loses the power of self -limitation with-
in his real sphere.

How Rahel with her lucidity of thought would
have exposed the modern superstition that it is in
outward departments of work that woman gives
expression to her human "individuality," while
a mother only acts as a sexual creature! How
miserable Rahel would have found the modern

78 Rahel Varnhagen

tendency that tries to turn the home into a mere
Sunday treat, and motherhood into a mere pro-
duction of children ! How profoundly Rahel sees,
in pointing out the final distinction between the
essential being of man and woman, when she says
that nature — she does not know from what eco-
nomy— ' ' keeps woman nearer to the plant " !

This "economy" is easily understood; it is be-
cause the tender life is woman's creation and be-
cause that life requires tranquillity for its genesis
and growth; because powerful instincts, deep
feelings, sincere relations only arise where calm
and warmth, coherence and unity are to be found ;
because a woman taken up by the problems of
external life, tied by obligations of public work,
harassed by competition or the struggle for exist-
ence, no longer possesses the psychological quali-
fications which are indispensable in order that
a child's soul may grow in peace and joy, sur-
rounded by seriousness and affection; because, in
other words, children need mothers, not only for
their physical birth, but for their human bringing
up.

Rahel hits the very centre of the spiritual task of
motherhood when she says that, if she had a child,
she would help it to learn to listen to its own in-

Personality 79

most ego; everything else she would sacrifice to
this. To be successful in this, says Rahel, is the
mother's loftiest task, her greatest talent, and
those who do not fulfil the task, who do not pos-
sess the talent, are not worthy to be called mothers,
but only breeders of children. That a number of
children, Rahel knew this only too well, are
ill-treated within the family fold; furthermore,
that few mothers perform their high office well,
all this Rahel insists upon, without its misleading
her into any of the foolish proposals of the present
day for remedying the evil.

Far from believing mothers to be incapable of
improvement, Rahel would redouble their power
and with it their responsibility. For the pro-
gress or ruin of humanity depends, in Rahel's
prophetic view, upon the capacity of the mothers
for performing their task.

I have elsewhere described Rahel's own deep
feeling of motherliness, the feeling which made it
one of the sorrows of her life that she herself had
never had a child, and which caused her to find in
the children of her relatives objects upon which
she could lavish her stores of tenderness.1 And
every woman who has what Rahel calls "ein

1 See Chapter III, Love.

8o Rahel Varnhagen

Liebherz, " knows that a general love is not enough ;
that only the particular, personal, intimate love
brings us happiness. Or, as Rahel in her later
years expresses it: "The life of our heart alone is
true and real. I knew this, even when I was
actually a child; and, triumph! I know it
still."

But a nature so constituted that it will "only
receive and only give from the heart" becomes in
this existence, as it still is, a tragic figure. And
as such we shall find Rahel in what follows,
according to her own unsurpassable definition
of the tragic.

"Tragedy is something which we are quite unable
to understand, to which we have to submit, which no
prudence, no wisdom can do away with or avoid; to
which our inmost nature drives, pulls, entices, and
irresistibly leads us, and there holds us fast; when
it destroys us, we are left with the question: Why?
Why is this done to me, why was 7 made to this end? —
and all one's mind and all one's strength only serves
to grasp, to feel the desolation or to divert one's self
thereat."

To sum up, I would maintain that Rahel, like
Fichte, saw "the radical evil" in inertness and
cowardice, but the way of life in courage and will ;

Personality 81

courage to take all claims and all vital decisions
in perfect seriousness, will to put one's whole
personality into every situation in life and to
bring to all vital questions the most perfect
honesty.

But this makes Rahel in her ethics just what I
have called her: a pre-Nietzschian. To him also
courage, veracity, mental rectitude were the basis
of all morality. And when Rahel speaks of feel-
ing "wounded in her nobility, " or thanks God that
she is "born noble," she gives the word the same
meaning as Nietzsche, when he shows that the
word "noble" originally meant in Greek one who
was something, who had a firmly united reality,
which the cowardly and untruthful person has not.
That Rahel' s train of thought was a similar one is
shown, amongst other things, by her connecting
women's "lack of coherence" with their untruth-
fulness.

The final judgment on Rand's individuality is,
then, that she was a born aristocrat, who neverthe-
less, owing to her origin and circumstances, found
herself hindered from showing the world her whole
nature as confidently and freely as she had wished,
but that in spite of this she remained, at every
period and in every situation of her life, "Rahel

82 Rahel Varnhagen

and nothing else." And one who can truthfully
bear such testimony of herself has a right to be
described by the greater, infinitely misused word:
a personality.

CHAPTER III

LOVE

IN spite of Strindberg, Weininger, and other de-
spisers of women, our time has witnessed a rapid
increase in man's appreciation of woman's per-
sonality. One among many signs of this is that
marriages and love affairs between younger men
and women who are a few or several years older
than themselves, are becoming more and more
numerous in our time.

Of course such connections have always oc-
curred. But formerly they were due in some cases
to the man's gratitude for help or appreciation,
in other cases to calculation, to win a kingdom, for
instance, an inheritance, or an appointment ; some-
times, finally, they were the result of the charm
certain women have preserved to an advanced
age. What is new in our time is that the cause is
more and more frequently mutual love. Stendhal

83

84 Rahel Varnhagen

cites Mme. du Deffand, with justice, as a proof
that "/' 'amour passion," which Rahel calls "the
new European love," may arise at an advanced
age. In our time instances might be multiplied.
Love more and more frequently resembles that
crocus which flowers in the autumn as well as
in the spring. And, to complete the simile, the
flower, which is innocuous in spring, is said to
be sometimes dangerous in autumn.

Nowadays it is no uncommon thing to see a
man who, like the young Spaniard Mora for
Mile, de Lespinasse, entertains an ardent love
for a woman ten years older; or even, like the
young Italian Rocca, for one twenty years older
than himself. Rocca was seized by this feeling
the instant Mme. de Stael bent over the litter on
which the wounded youth lay. When his friends
told him she was old enough to be his mother, he
replied that that was one reason the more for lov-
ing her and that he would love her so devotedly
that she would end by marrying him, as indeed she
did. George Sand, the most wonderful of all
womanly natures — fiery as wine, motherly as
milk, healthy, fertile, and rich as the earth she
trod, fascinating, uncertain, and dangerous as the
sea which witnessed some of her love-adventures —

Love 85

George Sand was loved by younger men, as well
as by those of her own age or older. Elizabeth
Barrett was some years older than Robert Brown-
ing, a difference in age which was of no import-
ance to their happiness. Other famous women
might be cited in this connection; I will confine
myself to recalling George Eliot. Her marriage
with Mr. Cross, who was thirty years younger than
herself, was to me, and to many others, an enigma,
until I heard an explanation from one who knew
the circumstances. The ' ' marriage of conscience "
between George Eliot and G. H. Lewes, who could
not be legally divorced from the wife who had de-
ceived him for years, was apparently not founded
according to my informant, upon true erotic
feeling on his part, but only upon intellectual sym-
pathy and devotion. George Eliot had never her-
self been the object of a great emotion, an emotion
capable of extravagant acts — in other words, the
emotion every true woman desires to have met
with before she dies — until she found it in the
young man whom she married at the age of sixty !

To these celebrated women, who found at last
in a younger man the love they had dreamt of
all their lives, Rahel also belongs.

Her marriage with a man fourteen years younger

86 Rahel Varnhagen

was her only bold experiment in life, whereas her
views on erotic questions were most unprejudiced.
George Eliot, on the other hand, expended all her
courage on her marriage of conscience, and not the
shadow of a thought of reform in the erotic sphere
is to be found in her books. Renunciation, sub-
mission, sympathy, fidelity are what she preaches.
She accomplished the task, at that time extremely
important, of showing that the evolutionary view
of life included sufficiently powerful motives to
produce all the old Christian virtues. But she
never examines the value of these virtues from an
evolutionary point of view! With a psychological
intuition comparable only with Shakespeare's she
revealed the dramas that take place among simple
conditions of life and half -awakened souls: those
of children and of the people. But George Eliot,
in spite of the circumstances of her own life, no
more extended the psychology and ethics of love
and marriage than our even more gifted Selma
Lagerlof has done so. In this respect the im-
portance of George Sand has been incomparably
greater than that of George Eliot. Mme. de Stael
and the sisters C. and E. Bronte have told us in
two or three books more about the loving heart of
woman than George Eliot in all her works; a Mme.

Love 87

du Deffand, a Mile, de Lespinasse, a Sister Mari-
ana, a Rahel, have done so merely in a few
letters.

In Delphine Mme. de Stael attacked indissoluble
marriage ; in Corinne she presented the tragedy of
the gifted feminine personality : that of wounding
her husband's prejudices on the subject of "woman-
liness" and thus weakening the erotic attraction of
her own personality. Rahel herself went through
the latter experience with Finckenstein and Ur-
quijo, she expressed even before Delphine and long
before George Sand ideas as rebellious as those
of either French authoress. And while death soon
solved what was problematical in Mme. de Stael's
and George Eliot's last marriages, the union of
Rahel and Varnhagen became a happy omen for
those ties of love by which many a woman of the
present day has attained the erotic consummation
of her nature when already advanced in years.

Like Mme. de Stael and George Eliot, Rahel
had already given her great emotion to another,
and thus none of them experiences the happiness
of loving as she is loved. But they discover that
their feminine personality, in its fully developed,
gifted individuality, is capable of inspiring a great

88 Rahel Varnhagen

love. They are thus notable examples of the
evolution of masculine love, which Mme. de Stael
despaired of in Corinne.

Rahel' s three love-stories are typical of the three
fundamental forms of woman's amatory feelings:
love of her own love, love of the man, and love of
the man's love. They may pass into each other
in a thousand delicate transitions, but in every
woman's love one of these forms nevertheless
predominates.

Man's love has at present only two funda-
mental forms: in love the majority of men love
themselves, only a minority the personality of the
woman.

And yet that is the only love the modern woman
wants.

The new woman, whose victorious advance our
time is witnessing, began to appear as early as
the eighteenth century. One of her first mani-
festations was our H. C. Nordenflycht, equally
remarkable for her poetry, her culture, her in-
tellectual emancipation, and her power of love.
Another was Mary Wollstonecraft-Godwin in Eng-
land ; in France many names might be mentioned,
among which the first is Mme. de Stael. The
German counterpart of these women is supplied by

Love 89

Rahel and a few other notable figures, especially
among the women of the romantic school.

What is common to all these women is that they
do not look upon love as the majority of their con-
temporaries still did — as the playful Cupid, who
only gave slight wounds — but saw in it the fatal
figure of Eros. Love was not to them a brief
episode of their youth, upon which they looked
back with smiles or emotion — from the serious-
ness of life itself. These women possessed the
highest intellectual culture of the age, exactly as
Heloise had that of her time. But this does not
prevent them, any more than it prevented her,
from abandoning themselves to a primitive, power-
ful, flaming, and consuming passion.

At whatever period and in whatever country a
woman has loved with this great and entire love,
it has implied in her the unity of soul and senses,
and at the same time the demand, or at least the
hope, to be loved as she herself has loved : with a
love that envelops the man's whole personality, his
human as well as his masculine characteristics. *

And Goethe's letters to Frau von Stein, Dide-

1 See, for instance, Letlres d'une Religieuse Portugaise, edited
by Karl Larsen; the letters of H61oise, edited, from the original
Latin, by Dr. Moth, and the letters of Mile, de Lespinasse now
published complete by Comte de Guerin.

90 Rahel Varnhagen

rot's to Sophie Voland, show that even in the
eighteenth century there were men who could love
with the most delicate appreciation of the loved
one's personality; who delighted in all its transi-
tions, who wished to share everything with the be-
loved, from the solemn hours of thought to the
fruits of the summer day, and who only felt rich
when so sharing.

But on the whole both these women and these
men were far in advance of their time as regards
the emotion which Rahel calls "the new European
love."

The first martyr of this love was Heloise, who

with her conscious will devoted her whole soul and

all her senses to love; who preferred to be called

Abelard's paramour rather than an emperor's

consort; who with reckless honesty confesses her

white-hot passion, her longing, her suffering, who

feels with pride that her soul is made great by this

fire, and that her fidelity to herself is her nobility.

She already possessed the new woman's clear view

of herself and of her love, and she already suffers

yjthe pangs innumerable women in our time have

I suffered, when they found that the man's love had

'never embraced their soul. In Heloise we find

already the unity of love, glowing passion, and

Love 91

intense affection; we find defiance of the destiny
which denies her the satisfaction of her need of love
— the loftiest and purest need of her being — we
find the courage to suffer, nay, to be crushed,
rather than not to have loved, that is, not to have
lived.

Heloise has certainly had sisters here and there
in the course of the centuries, though they have
not had her power of giving expression to their
souls. x

But the type of man these women had waited
for first appeared in Werther, a man with such
freedom of soul, so responsive a sensitiveness, so
profound a need of love, that to him, too, love was
the vital question ; a man who could love a Heloise-
nature as such a " grande amoureuse" would be
loved, with all his senses as a woman, but with all
his soul as a personality. 2

1 See, among other works, Kurt Breysig's Die Entstehung der
Liebe.

3 Dr. W. Nowack, in his interesting study, Liebe und Ehe im
deutschen Roman zu Rousseau's Zeiten, reminds us how during the
Renaissance woman as well as man aspired to completeness of
personality without any kind of "emancipation movement,"
since her right in this respect was undisputed; that even then
spiritualised love appeared among exceptional natures and al-
ways without marriage, whereas Rousseau, on the other hand, was
lacking in comprehension of the development of the feminine
personality. Goethe, who had absorbed with every fibre of his

92 Rahel Varnhagen

Rahel began by sharing the fate of the woman
who is before her time, in not meeting the man who
was worthy of her love.

The fact that young Count Karl von Fincken-
stein not only fell in love with, but also became
engaged to Rahel, who was remarkable neither
for beauty, social position, nor wealth, shows that
he was a man who already belonged to the new age
in spirit, although in other ways his disposition
was not such as could sustain this spirit.

He and Rahel saw each other for the first time
at the opera, and their profound love of music,
which in him was united to a remarkable talent
for singing, was the real community of souls
which brought them together. They met in
society, for Rahel was just then in the phase dur-

heart the new gospel of the triumph of passion over reason, was
the first to extend Rousseau's doctrine and to be the discoverer
of modern love. Werther spiritualises his love into affinity of
the soul, he is enraptured by what is individual in the loved one 's
being, by the poetry in her nature. In Stella Goethe sought al-
ready to resolve a matrimonial conflict in the spirit of our time,
and he saw that the custom would have to be transformed, if it
was not to become immorality. In all his works Goethe shows
that reverence for the harmony and beauty of woman's soul,
without which no refined soul-life is possible between man and
woman, without which passion can be neither lofty nor enduring.
And what Goethe had begun was continued in Germany by
the romantic school and Young Germany, and in France by St.
Simon, Michelet, Stendhal, and others.

Love 93

ing which she made up for some of the pleasure of
which ill-health and mental suffering had deprived
her in her first youth. She appeared at this time
younger than her age, with a reserve of appetite
for social enjoyments. Thus Rahel, who was
already twenty-five, seemed more like other
young women, and it was not until later that
Finckenstein, who was a year and a half her
junior, felt the oppression of Rahel's superior
personality, while at first he had soul enough only
to feel its charm.

He was a man who might have been purposely
made to be idealised by Rahel. In the first place
his nature had the refinement, ease, and grace of
the aristocrat, which possessed the strongest attrac-
tion for Rahel throughout her life. In addition to
this he was unusually handsome. His fine figure,
his noble features, his mild blue eyes, the golden
hair, fine as silk, which surrounded his forehead in
natural curls, all gave him the appearance of a
prince of fairy-tale come to life. His singing, his
many-sided culture, his feeling for nature, and
his admiration for Goethe, his impressionable
sensitiveness, all made Rahel believe in a pro-
found affinity of souls between them. And his
letters, which, together with a lock of his wonder-

94 Rahel Varnhagen

ful hair, were found among Rahel's private
treasures after her death, are sufficiently full of
meaning and warmth to make Rahel believe what
he constantly assured her — that he belonged to
her "for ever"; that she set in motion all the good
within him, that she formed his personality, that
he found in her a clarity and truth, a diversity and
a strength of feeling as in no one else. The know-
ledge of her love makes him weep with happiness,
as he reads her glorious letters under the flowering
acacias, and when in her little room they look up
together towards the stars he feels a perfect bliss.

Since she loved him herself, Rahel could not
doubt his having strength of will enough to
prepare a future for their love.

But how often is young love strong? As sel-
dom as it is clear-sighted. In most cases this
young love is an enchanting and intoxicating feel-
ing that at last one experiences for one's self this
wonderful thing of which poets have sung and
round which one's dreams have circled; that one
knows its suspense and anxieties, exchanges its ex-
pressions of tenderness, hears and pronounces its
great and beautiful words! During all this Rahel,
like countless highly developed young women be-
fore and after her, transformed Finckenstein into

Love 95

something that he was not. Only by degrees did
she discover that she did not know his real nature,
that which only actions can reveal. The words,
again, which lovers say or write to each other, only
show what they wish to be or what they believe
themselves capable of becoming, not what they
are. When put to the test, Finckenstein proved
to be a weak child, incapable of entertaining a
great feeling, still less of fighting for the feeble one
he harboured.

His father was dead and he lived on the family
estate with his mother and his many sisters.
These female relatives worshipped him with a
jealous affection which grudged him to any other
woman. And to this was added the aristocratic
prejudice which was deeply wounded at the
thought that he should introduce a wife of middle-
class, and, what was worse still, Jewish, birth
into their circle. No doubt some of the rich and
handsome Jewesses of Berlin had made fashionable
marriages, but this had not been a source of joy
to the families they had married into. Thus
Finckenstein's mother and sisters found many
arguments to prove to him that his marriage with
Rahel would turn out unhappily for himself!
And so he begins, like all weak souls, to lament

96 Rahel Varnhagen

his fate in his letters to Rahel. By turns he
assures Rahel of his love and tells her that he
cannot bear to see his mother and sisters suffer.
Rahel, who loves him, still hopes "to love him into
love." She believes his protestations, suffers in
his suffering, and acts "foolishly and uselessly, " as
she afterwards called it, in holding to him as long
as she believes in his asseverations. "Neither of
us was a hero, " she says, "neither he in his way nor
I in mine. " But by degrees she perceives and at
last she says openly, that he does not feel happy
with her, nor she with -him, in the same way,
because she overawes him. She understands that
his relatives are gaining power, while she herself
is losing it, since he feels ill at ease under the in-
fluence of her strong personality. Time after time
she gave him the choice between herself and his
own people: he returned to her, but only to re-
commence his lamentations. Rahel did not hasten
the decision, nor was she driven to it by wounded
pride, but by the knowledge that no happiness
could be real unless it was necessary to both of
them. Their engagement lasted from 1796 to
1800, with unremitting protestations of love and
tears on his part, interspersed with the inevitable
assurances of a nature like his: that he did not

Love 97

lack energy, but — that his heart suffered in
causing pain to those nearest him!

And so the decision was the usual one in such
cases. Rahel, who had most right to suffer, but
who complained least, was sacrificed and the
jealous, selfish, narrow-minded sisters carried off
the victory.

So blind was the man who had won the first
love of a Rahel. But it cannot be doubted that
Finckenstein's feeling for Rahel was real enough
to have enabled her to give him strength to de-
cide otherwise. Most women in Rahel's place
would have used all the resources their love, their
suffering, and their personality gave them.

Rahel did not do so. She hoped to the last that
his feeling was as strong as his words. When she
saw that it was as pale and weak as his good looks,
she gave up the struggle.

But she did so only after sufferings, in which
all the bitterness of the past was mingled. Even
to begin to hope had been difficult to her, who
through her birth and early sorrows had become so
convinced of being destined for suffering; who had
stood in shadow by the way along which the
fortunate passed, had stood with closed hands,
certain that no golden apple would fall into her

98 Rahel Varnhagen

grasp. And since the marvel had befallen her
that life had opened her clenched hands and laid
in them its most beautiful gift, she could not re-
gard love as a thing to fight for. Even should she
once more be lonely after having tasted com-
panionship, humiliated after having been raised
up, poor after having possessed riches — she must
bear this rather than do violence to her inmost
consciousness, the consciousness of the new woman :
that no human being has the right to retain an-
other by any other power than that other person's
inmost necessity. Unless the requisite strength
existed in the loved one himself, in his emotion, to
ensure the happiness of both, there was no meaning
to justify their union or to give it reality. It was
no false pride, no ill-applied consideration, that
determined Rahel. For she possessed in a high
degree the knowledge that belongs to the new love :
that one has duties in the first place towards one's
love, above all that of sacrificing the unessential
to the essential.

And when Rahel gave Finckenstein full freedom
of choice, she still cherished in her inmost heart the
lover's hope, that hope which can live even on
improbabilities, that he would choose her. He
showed, on the contrary, how right one of Rahel's

Love 99

friends had been in comparing his heart to a toy
watch, with figures and hands but no works !

Rahel was left disappointed, not only of her
happiness, but disappointed in her lover's nature.
She did not accuse him; he had acted, she said,
according to his nature, the fault was hers, who had
not seen what his nature was. But such a per-
ception is never a consolation, or at least the way to
such a source of consolation is very long. Rahel
now felt, like others who have gone through simi-
lar experiences, that all blows are light in com-
parison with that of finding one's self deceived in a
person. It is this pain which may make the very
joints of the personality go to pieces, which may
bring a dissolving poison into the spiritual organ-
ism. And natures like Rahel's are above all ex-
posed to this pain. For they have a boundless
confidence in the nobility of others, and all life is
suddenly thrown out of gear when this confidence
is shaken through the very person who has in-
spired it. The traces of such suffering are never
effaced.

Yes, there is always a drawn sword between us,
and life after this, just as it smiled most brightly
upon us, suddenly took us by the throat like a
murderer. Our childlike confidence in life is im-

ioo Rahel Varnhagen

possible when we have discovered that it does not
mean well by us. And Rahel, who had already
suffered so much, thought herself destined for un-
happiness. She expresses the experience of her-
self and many others in a profound word when she
speaks of the sense of guilt one feels through sorrow.
This feeling is not the brooding over the faults
and mistakes through which one may have helped
to bring about one's own sorrow. No, it is, as
Rahel says, the sense that one is no longer one of
nature's pure beings, a worthy sister to all its
calm, healthy, beautiful creatures, since one has
undergone the ill-treatment, has sunk into the
despair, in which one would have thrown away
existence merely to escape suffering.

"Oh, do not think that what I tell you is exag-
gerated. I am only afraid, when anything happens
to me, that it is everlasting. To wound a sensitive
spirit is to destroy it. If I showed my wounds they
would remind you of the shambles. . . ."

" Acquaintance with misfortune is degrading, that is
an opinion I will never relinquish. One is no longer a
pure creature of nature, no longer stands in the re-
lation of a sister to the calm things of life, when once,
terrified by pain and humiliation, one would gladly in
one's despair have given one's life not to be able to feel
pain; when one has seen cruelty in everything — all
nature. . ." "One has to look forward either to

Love 101

madness or to death or to recovery. Neither of the
first two has happened to me. But still I cannot say
that I am better; I have got over it, let me say. . . ."
" What I have not received I can forget; but what
has happened to me I cannot forget. God protect
any one from understanding this."

From this time Rahel no longer felt herself
indivisible, that is to say, she lived with two views
of the world : one of inmost despair, which had be-
come her direct view; the other life-loving, which
was no longer direct, but was the hard-won faculty
of continuing to impart the riches of existence
"more purely, more willingly, and in greater variety
than any one else. "

Rahel saw Finckenstein again eleven years later,
the same year that he died. And how deeply she
had suffered is shown by her words, both after
their meeting and after his death. He came to her
"cold as a frog, shamefaced as a knave caught in
the act"; he talked about his handsome wife, and
Rahel afterwards wrote some pages in her diary
which show that she found the explanation of her
inability to inspire a real love in Finckenstein in
her own lack of beauty, charm, and power of
attraction. But after his death she feels once
more that the contempt he inspired in her when

102 Rahel Varnhagen

alive has not disappeared. For death could not
alter her judgment of his paltriness.

It may be disputed whether Weininger is right
in his opinion that the chief component of genius
is memory, lit is certain, however, that this is a
fundamental condition of depth of feeling. \ Rahel
was one of those who are never induced by death
or lapse of time to change their feelings. Her
heart had cried aloud "murderer, " as Finckenstein
sat calmly before her. And she would not change
this heart of hers, which nature herself had fash-
ioned "rebelle et douce." J A sea of bitterness rose
within her at the thought that that man had had
this power over her, nay, still had it. {

"I felt like an animal that belonged to him. He
had had it in his power to devour me. ..."

"But out of every flame I have hitherto brought
my heart unscathed, and this heart, even when it is
deeply stirred, lives entirely for itself. ... If by
a magic ring he had yesterday been able to undo all
that has passed in these twelve years, he would have
had the power, if he had wished, once more to possess
himself of my whole life. But this vice in me — (how
shall I otherwise call it or regard it ? I do not reproach
myself; I know my heart perfectly: it must love; it is
faithful, for it is strong and whole) — this vice is called
virtue in women who are favoured by fortune ! "

Rightly to understand the force of these words

Love 103

it must be remembered that when Rahel wrote this
she was engaged to Varnhagen.

The most lenient judgment she passed up-
on him was severe enough: that he was a child,
destroying values of the greatness of which he
was unconscious.

During the first few weeks after the rupture,
Rahel was helped in the best possible way by an
illness, which gave her time and an excuse for
fighting her way in solitude to resignation. When
she then began, with the receptivity of the con-
valescent, to reopen her mind to new impressions,
a friend, the Countess von Schlabrendorf, took
her with her to Paris. The wealth of experiences
this visit occasioned, came at the right time.
Rahel' s full receptivity and her shrewd appre-
hension are shown in her letters to those at home,
among whom both Jean Paul and F. Schlegel con-
sider that a truer picture of Parisian life and of
the French could not be imagined.

But Rahel's best help in her efforts to regain her
love of life came from a young compatriot.

This was a youth of twenty, named Bokelmann,
who was sent to her by a friend they had in com-
mon. With unusual good looks he combined a

104 Rah el Varnhagen

soul as open as a flower. He attached himself
warmly to Rahel just at the moment when every
heart is most susceptible of affection: when its
wounds are beginning to close.

The young man's appreciative sympathy acted
like gentle breezes upon trampled grass. Blade
after blade rose again and caught the dew and
the sunshine.

But Rahel was not yet ready for a new love, and
her delight in the rich, pure, young feeling that
she encountered did not develop into any other
kind of love than that in which one desires no-
thing, in which one "does not wish to possess the
lovable thing, but only to see it bloom." And
when they part, after a couple of months of each
other's society in Paris, we see from Rahel's
letters that she is also trying to transform his
inclination into the fine feeling without a name,
which Rahel so well characterises in saying that
we can delight in each other as we delight in and
love a lovable child, met by chance, a happiness
which may belong to every one and which does not
involve any desire to possess the object loved.
And on both sides, after a few years' corre-
spondence, the relationship became nothing more
than a beautiful memory.

Love 105

On her way home from Paris Rahel visited a
married sister at Amsterdam. She took in the
natural beauties and art of Holland and Belgium
with fine appreciation.

And all the glories of art she had become ac-
quainted with on this journey made her long for
Italy. But, as she says later, the good fortune of
"seeing Italy with my senses and a joyful, strong
heart" never fell to her lot.

That she was again capable of longing, and that
this longing turned to the south, proves that she
felt once more that love of life which she had
thought extinct.

She expresses her consciousness of the change in
the words: "Without wishing to do so, we are
always playing rouge et noir with ourselves;
whether we win or lose we feel that we are thus
living. "

Even during her deepest suffering Rahel had
told herself that life had still some sources
of joy left, though they were then obscured by
sorrow.

Through Bokelmann she had experienced "as
much of love as was needful. "

"Some one must be rejoiced by what was a neces-
sity to us and what our never-resting conscience bade

io6 Rahel Varnhagen

us create ; and so we begin again to take delight in our
work."

She could now return consoled to her garret,
though filled with the resignation which makes
one still young feel old.

"My soul has regained its peace, my mind its
equilibrium, my spirit its due elasticity. ..."

"When all is said and done, all our tears and bitter-
est suffering are only about possession ; (but one can
never possess anything but the capacity for enjoy-
ment .\ .

"What really makes people thoroughly unhappy is,
that they cannot make up their minds not to be happy.
But when once we are thrust into this, old age suddenly
sets in. Our aspirations are no longer directed to the
infinite; we parcel out life and live, as we say, for the
hour. 'Tears, splendour, and fury have an end.'
We stiffen, grow kind, and get wrinkles. Old age
comes suddenly — like every other perception — not
gradually, as people think. "

In true old age, however, resignation is pre-
cisely our only means of still feeling young. And
Rahel was still a long way off that age.

No trait is more significant of Rahel's nature —
and nothing makes her to a greater degree our
contemporary — than her never regretting the love
which had caused her so much suffering, nor yet

Love 107

trying to persuade herself that she will never love
again. She knows that "they who have pain,
have yet the most of life."

"Like Posa, I have lost. But I should not wish to
be one of those who do not hazard themselves. ..."

"He who goes about in this hard world without
armour on his breast must be wounded. I did not
know this. The terror of it is the worst, and when one
still looks upon bleeding as death. Wounds will
still come, but no longer unexpectedly. "

And in this trait the great nature reveals it-
self. They only live who are lavish of them-
selves.

Rahel expressed a great truth when she said that
privileged souls, regal natures, long remain inno-
cent; that they only learn with difficulty to per-
ceive that there is such a thing as baseness, and
constantly ignore this experience in the sense that
they return again and again with confidence to
men and life, in spite of their having neither for-
gotten nor avenged the wrongs they have suffered.

Rahel herself was one of these natures, who
remember the evil without the memory having a
warning effect, who learn from all experiences

io8 Rahel Varnhagen

except from this, that there are natures less noble
than their own..

And thus the experience of sorrow could not
prevent Rahel from loving once more, and this time
again a man who was to make her suffer far more
deeply.

Rahel had now reached the dangerous age in a
woman's life, the age of thirty, when, as never be-
fore or after, a woman is ready for love in the full
sense of the word. Of the Northern woman, at
any rate, and as such Rahel may be regarded, it
is true that in her first youth she only loves with
her soul. But at the age we speak of her senses as
well as her soul are awake; with her whole being
the woman then desires the consummation of her
nature through love and motherhood. She still
desires it with the whole freshness of youth, but
with a new strength. The girl's love-longing has
life before it; the mature woman knows she must
soon begin the descent, and that with every year
the possibility becomes greater of her being com-
pelled to die without having lived, in life's own
holy and full sense.

Few are the natures that use up their whole
power of loving on a first love. And least of all
was Rahel one of them. The tempest of spring

Love 109

had broken a branch just when it should have
flowered, but a fresh warmth in the air was all that
was needed to make all the buds burst.

This came about when, in 1802, Rahel became
acquainted with the man who was the object of
the great love of her life, that love which never
comes twice in a human life, for which every
earlier love is only a preparation and of which
every later one is only a memory. It is this love
that makes all the forces of the being rise as the
spring floods rise in rivers and streams; that fills
the whole being as the wine-press is filled with the
ripe grapes of the vineyard; that collects in a
sacrificial cup all tears formerly shed in sorrow or
gladness. This love is never unrequited, it is al-
ways the daemonic attraction of two beings. This
irresistible and fateful passion may unite for their
happiness or their ruin two beings fully worthy of
one another. But it may also force together two
beings of very unequal worth to the misfortune
of one or both. And such was Rahel's fate in the
love that turned her whole being to flame and
burned her youth to ashes.

It was psychologically necessary that this fate
should befall Rahel in the person of a man in all
respects unlike Finckenstein, unlike him as the

no Rahel Varnhagen

south is unlike the north or the red blood unlike
the blue.

The Spanish Secretary of Legation in Berlin,
Don Raphael d'Urquijo, was introduced to Rahel
by his Minister. All the rare beauty and chival-
rous charm of his nation was present in him, to-
gether with the directness and vivacity of the child
of nature, which always exercised the greatest
attraction upon Rahel. Urquijo came from his
country home in northern Spain and his exterior
was typical of the Basque race. His refined fea-
tures possessed nobility and strength in the same
degree, his eyes were such as Velasquez painted,
now flaming, gleaming fires, now deep, dark wells.
His Spanish dignity and southern charm were
united to a natural ease which made his every
movement graceful. His voice had the music that
ennobles even the commonplace word and renders
that of affection irresistible.

To all these charms was added the novel singu-
larity of his foreign nationality. This has at first
the effect of a mysterious and personal peculi-
arity. It requires time to discover that this
interesting quality, which allures one with its
unknown treasures and strange fascination, only

Love 1 1 1

belongs to the nature of the nation or race, not to
that of the person himself.

With Urquijo as with Rahel love appeared at
their very first meeting, and the time that imme-
diately ensued was a very happy one. They were
united by sympathetic exchanges of ideas, sincere
affection, and erotic attraction. The only un-
easiness in their companionship was due to the
scruples his sense of honour imposed on him in re-
gard to a youthful love affair in Spain, scruples
which, however, were soon removed, as Urquijo
heard that this love of his youth had thrown him
over long before he had ceased to love her. But
now a more serious conflict arose, between Rahel 's
frank and generous nature, her confident love, free
from all jealousy, and the Spaniard's sensitive
and jealous feeling of proprietorship. Besides
the inevitable misunderstandings due to their
ignorance of each other's national customs, others
constantly arose, through this difference in the
manner of thejr love. Rahel, who attributed to
Urquijo nothing but great, pure, and good feelings,
hoped that his jealousy, however unreasonable,
mad even, it seemed to her, was nevertheless a
proof of the strength of his love. She did all she
could to show him how dearly she loved him.

1 12 Rahel Varnhagen

But she could not love wildly and jealously like
a Spanish woman, she had to love with the lofti-
ness and wholeness of her own nature. And it
availed her nothing that she was perfect in her
generous purity of soul, in her childlike confidence.
For just these qualities, which proved her de-
votion, seemed to him to prove her coldness.1
That Urquijo himself took an erotic relationship
seriously is shown not only by the scruples lately
mentioned but by the fact that he afterwards
married a Berlin girl, insignificant from every
point of view, who had become his mistress.
But he could not see the earnestness of Rahel's
feeling, because it was so unlike his own. It was
an external difficulty that Urquijo only under-
stood but could not use the German language and
that Rahel did not know Spanish, so that their
correspondence, except when now and then Rahel
relapses into German, like their conversation,
was carried on in French. Only a small part of
their correspondence has been preserved, but from
this remnant one can form an idea of what Rahel 's

1 " Love is the greatest of convictions " — eye, ear, feeling, heart,
are all irresistibly convinced; if one can resist, then one no longer
loves; that is why only human beings, that is, "lofty beings,
capable of conviction," love — this is one of Rahel's profound
sayings of love.

Love 113

letters must have been, which Varnhagen was
afterwards permitted to read and in which he
found such "exuberance of life," so glowing a
warmth, that he could imagine only one counter-
part, Rousseau's letters, also destroyed, to Mme.
d'Houdetot. Of Urquijo's letters only a few
unimportant notes remain.

The conflict which finally parted Rahel from
Urquijo was not, as with Finckenstein, the old-
fashioned one between love and the prejudice of
birth. It was an entirely modern one, between the
man's and the woman's way of loving. And in
this case it was further complicated by Urquijo's
having not merely the Spaniard's, but much more
than the Spaniard's share of jealousy in addition to
a poor measure of self-confidence.

Where there is an Othello, an lago soon appears.
This part was here taken by Urquijo's friend, a
Spanish count, who had proposed to Rahel but
had been rejected, and now constantly put for-
ward Rahel's superiority as a ground for Urquijo's
distrusting her. When Rahel found that her
numerous friendships and social pleasures were
looked upon by Urquijo as a theft from him, she
gave up society, moved into the country, and saw
no one but him. But not even this could convince

8

ii4 Rahel Varnhagen

him. Thus passed a year and a half, during which
Rahel could reckon her happiness in moments,
while her distress increased with every day. His
power over her was still the same. After the
most agitated scene a tender word from him is
able to "heal her soul completely," to open her
heart anew, to awaken her love again and again,
and cause it to flow to him. How is it conceivable,
asks Rahel, that his morbid distrust should not be
curable and that they should not end by being
happy since they love one another; since they are
both good, simple, pure in heart, in other words
have everything that is necessary to be able to
love? For one cannot love, Rahel continues, with
profound truth, unless one has these essential
qualities; the same that are necessary for reli-
gion. How can he think she has too much genius
to be able to love him? Her whole genius is no-
thing but her power of loving! Does he not see
that "the magic works so" that she belongs more
and more to him; that his presence constantly
frees her from a sense of pain? She tells him that,
whatever may happen, her heart belongs to him
for life — and ought not she to know this better
than he, since the heart is hers?

How can he disapprove of her letting every one

Love 115

see her feeling? Is it not a woman's nobility to be
able to love? Indeed, women have no other rank
and no other position, and she for her part would
always show her love, would never conceal the
fact that she lived only for him.

"Faithfulness is a matter of course, it is a condition
of love. Without a faithful spirit one cannot love at
all — cannot live, I might say; for what does one know
of one's self, unless one feels one's self to be true?
Without this one could not recognise one's self! ..."

"How I love you, your soul! Believe me, I under-
stand it, penetrate it; none of its movements escapes
me. Mine is worthy of it, and I divine yours. That
is my genius, my wit; never believe that I have any
other than this! I am made to love you, and that is
all. . . . What a marvel that you love me! Yes,
I believe it, but it is much . . . "

She begs him not to divide his intelligence from
his heart. For, if we rightly listen to the former,
it always confirms the latter. She tells him again
and again that her appearing incomprehensible to
him is due to his failure to perceive how she is one
with her love ; how entirely unworldly she is ; that
she is "simple even to stupidity," and that this is
just the quality she loves in herself.

At every moment when she has been in harmony
with him, she has felt the religious consecration of

n6 Rahel Varnhagen

their love and hoped that it would hallow their
whole life. For even now love makes one of them
holy to the other, and she relies upon his seeing
that their union — "full of soul, of feeling, of up-
rightness of heart" — is the only reality, while his
doubts are nothing but unreality.

How great — and how imprudent — is Rahel,
in her assurances that she relies upon his love!
But those women who want to put their lovers'
affection to the test are, according to Rahel,
either "mad, or they are lying, or they do not love.'1
She would wish to take all suffering upon herself,
so that he might be spared pain, and still she
would be happy in the midst of her sufferings, if
only he loved her. She tries to get him to see\
that love, when it is genuine, is " a force of the heart,
afire of the soul, a unity of the spirits, a purity of the
whole being"; nay, that this warmth of the heart
is the same that has founded religions and won
battles, that has reared the fabric of existence and
formed all holy bonds.

She complains that nature and circumstances
have denied her the revelation of her soul through
outward beauty. For it would have been her
highest happiness thus to reveal herself to him,
"for whom alone I would buy every attraction

Love 117

with my blood, for whom alone I live and would
wish to be beautiful. "

When Urquijo, before a journey, had rested a
few hours at her home, she told him afterwards
how she had sat by him and rejoiced at his calm
sleep ; how she watched over him like a sister, like
a woman who was his as surely as the heart in his
breast; how the air around him had glowed with
tenderness, and how she had intertwined their
souls and raised them both in a silent prayer.

It remained to Rahel an everlasting, torment-
ing enigma that a woman, who thus showed the
unity and intensity of her feeling in every action
and every word, should not be able to convince its
object of it. For it was manifest as the warmth of
the sun, the freshness of the air; why was it not
seen and respected as much as these great things
of nature?

And when she was forced to tell herself again and
again that he yet doubted, all existence became in-
coherent, as though its fundamental laws had been
cancelled. If Urquijo had not returned her love —
that she could have understood and submitted to.
But Rahel's whole being rebelled against this ill-
treatment of her feeling, this blindness to her
nature, this impenetrable and cruel riddle.

n8 Rahel Varnhagen

Among Urquijo's letters are a few lines, written
during an illness, which give a clue to the under-
standing of the riddle, especially if we look at
them in connection with his subsequent history.
He writes: " Your calm, which under other circum-
stances would have caused me unhappiness, some-
what relieves my hard lot. I will see you as little as
possible, unless you desire the contrary. You must
be able to guess the reason. Your words console me,
but your presence adds fuel to the fire." When,
later, Rahel asked herself with bitterness why he
believed in the insignificant girl who became first
his mistress and, when he was sure of her love,
his wife, perhaps the answer was this: that she
gave him that proof of her love which Rahel had
not given, and which, to the southern lover,
is the only convincing proof. To this it must be
added that Urquijo with good reason found him-
self inferior to Rahel, and that he saw her inter-
est in her gifted men friends. Urquijo doubtless
suffered deeply from his incapacity for con-
viction, just as Rahel suffered from her inability
to convince him.

Indirectly Rahel has confessed that she re-
gretted the want of courage which prevented
her from surrendering herself completely to love,

Love 1 19

when she compares herself with Pauline Wiesel
and praises the latter's courage, which, together
with her irresistible charms, gave her a different
fate.

"There is a difference between us: you live every-
thing, since you have had courage and fortune; I
imagine most of it, since I have had no fortune and
was not given courage — not the courage to force my
happiness from fortune, to pluck it out of her hands.
I have only learnt the courage of endurance," Rahel
writes to Pauline Wiesel.

Rahel complains also of the error of "madly letting
one's life run away in pain, imbecility, aridity, sand,
and chaos, regardless that no drop flows twice, and
that one is committing a theft and an atrocious murder
upon one's self. Simply because we are everlastingly
seeking an approbation that is really indifferent to us,
and are not brave enough to say boldly in the face of
mankind what we desire and demand. Nothing is so
holy and true and so direct a gift of God as a genuine
attachment; but this will always be resisted in de-
ference to an approved cipher. We allow ourselves to
be burdened with what is most foreign to us, and thus
our true selves are lost . . . . "

"Only inclination and the heart's desires! If I
cannot live for them, if I am too pitiful, too abject,
too down-trodden and misused, then I will hence-
forward explore them in myself and worship them. It
is God's strong will in the heart — the dark heart,
heaving with blood — that has no name among us, and
therefore we cheat ourselves, until it is dead."

120 Rahel Varnhagen

Even if these utterances are based upon many
experiences, others' as well as her own, it is never-
theless probable that some particular neglect of
the call of passion was in Rahel' s thoughts when
she wrote these words. But if it was what is
hinted at above, then it is certain that Rah el's
want of courage was not due merely to the con-
siderations she mentions, but, as with many
other women, to the conviction that she lacked
the power to charm which makes the bold
stroke successful. The man whose love Rahel
was to keep, must, she felt, coalesce with and
understand her soul.

Here lay probably the focus of all their con-
tradictions: that between northern and southern
blood, between the love of a man and that of a
woman and between a highly developed woman
and an ordinary man, who were moreover of
different races and nationalities. And finally
the contrast between two widely different tem-
peraments and two widely different conceptions
of love.

It is this last antagonism which makes Rand's
misfortune typical of the developed women of our
time. Rahel was one of the ever-increasing class
of women who no doubt have their share of sensu-

Love 121

ousness but do not try to win the man by means of
this, desiring rather that sensuous unity shall be a
result of the combined flame of two souls. Men,
on the other hand, feel more attracted, and be-
lieve themselves more loved, by those women
who by the power of their own sensuousness awake
that of the man, and thus, if they themselves
possess a soul, by degrees win his soul also. The
purity and truth of Rahel's nature made her in-
capable of using the kind of means by which such
women retain and dominate men. And it was
Rahel's unspeakable torment to see Urquijo's feel-
ing dwindle through what she felt to be the
strength and beauty of her own. Rahel's love also
included passion ; but this was only the surf in a
sea of devotion and fidelity.

From Rahel's words one can understand the
nature of Urquijo's complaints. Among the
scenes which were repeated daily, she had de-
scribed one, which gives us an idea of the rest.

They were walking together in the Thiergarten,
when Rahel caught sight of an unusually pretty
woman, unknown to her, and wanted to look at
her more closely. This interest of Rahel's in an-
other than himself made Urquijo furious, and
when Rahel sighed at his reproaches, he exclaimed :

122 Rahel Varnhagen

" Finckenstein treated you badly too, you ought to
be used to it."

At these words Rahel went through one of those
moments when our existence breaks in pieces,
moments in which all our surroundings are im-
pressed upon us with the utmost clearness. Rahel
always remembered that when these words were
spoken they were standing "in the depth of the
wood, facing the water, in the evening sun, " and
she answered: "If those words had been spoken
in a play, the hearers would have shuddered and
burst into tears." "That is true," he replied.
"But that ought to set you free from me and
show you that we cannot live together."

Rahel had held out as long as she believed in his
love, had even held out when he said: " I love you
but do not respect you' ' ; said that he believed she
deceived him with others ; said that she did not love
him. But when at last he said that he respected
her but did not love her, she found strength to free
herself, though every fibre of her body trembled
with pain and every drop of her blood was rilled
with the charm he still possessed for her and never
lost.

So long as he had spoken of his own love, of his
doubts of hers, while all the time he was goading

Love 123

hers to madness by his jealousy, a rupture had
appeared to her impossible. Now, as she after-
wards said, she found courage, but only in in-
dignation at his unworthy treatment of her, only
in the conviction that now "the value and possi-
bility of her existence" were at stake, although it
was still "the purest flame that consumed her
heart."

" Once I lived entirely for one person. I loved him
to madness ! For he, his aspect, was to me the present
and the future, — and in a certain sense this was true.
And in my soul I never thought I should give him up. "

"I lied: I did not utter my heart's demands, the
claims of my person, lest I should hear in words the
murderous No; I let myself be smothered, since I
would not be pierced through. Miserable cowardice!
Unfortunate being that I was, I wished to defend the
life of my heart; I placed myself in front, I placed
myself behind, I lied and lied and lied."

"Even in the greatest passion one ought not to
allow one's self to be torn and dragged along sode-
gradingly by pain. We abandon ourselves to love,
whether good or bad, as to a sea, and then our luck,
strength or art "bf swimming takes us over, or else it
swallows us up as its own. ' As Goethe says : ' He who
abandons himself to love, does he take any thought of
his life?/ . ."

' ' Then, armed for murder, I seized my own heart
and went, as though out of life. For I knew it was
a dark death I was going to, and I wrote: I choose

124 Rahel Varnhagen

despair, which I do not know. It was a slow murder.
And there arose a desolation more terrible than pain,
rupture, and loss of the beloved. Blame me, as I my-
self blame this cowardly baseness. But consider this:
that nature had given him a fascination for me, and
thereby given me an infatuation, which the clearest
consciousness of thought was not rapid enough to
counteract. The impression was stronger. That is
love."

"All this life has been snatched from me, even did
I carry heaven within me. ... I feel a whole
flood of tears in my breast over my heart, and a single
thing is enough to remind me of all. Nothing appears
to me isolated any more: I feel wholly a prisoner. I
do not console myself with the higher life! This
would not exclude a beautiful earthly life. Every
moment heightens and intensifies my intimate, ever
deeper sense of the inconceivable loss ! — No joy reaches
to my heart; like a spectre he stands outside and
closes it with a giant's strength, and only pain comes
in. This spectre, this distorted image — I love. ..."

"Oh, this one favour true grief grants us, when she
forces upon us the reflection that she never can return,
that she has really cut us off from that part of our life
which she so cruelly tore. So it has been with me."
[End of 1806.]

In her first despair Rahel told herself that
Urquijo had never loved her, since he could be so
blind to her deepest nature; and she calls both
him and Finckenstein merely "shadows, coloured
by my fire. " But even in the face of this thought

Love 125

Rahel had the strength of soul not to wish to erase
from her life any of the events that had condemned
her to remain solitary, though people crowded
about her, and to "be compelled to die unsatis-
fied, " though she herself had a world to give.

"Pangs of the heart are benefits, love-sorrows,
slighted love, bliss. . . .

' ' Therefore I regret nothing. And I repose deliciously
upon the torments and outrages I have suffered as
though upon laurels and fairest myrtle. He who
probes as I have will fare no better. My suffering
is too human and too great for a little wailing!"

"Never have I lived and never said what life is: a
love which does not turn to poison or remain with us
as pain. "

Often as she asks herself, like countless other
women, why her loftiest feeling has been the most
outraged, she yet feels in her heart the certainty
that is made up of innumerable, indescribable,
and unutterable things and that cannot be de-
stroyed by brooding: the certainty that in spite
of all she was really loved by Urquijo. And when,
several years later, he again visits Rahel and she is
thus prompted to read his letters again, she feels
that these, as surely as her own, were the expres-
sion of a real love. She then determined to put

126 Rahel Varnhagen

to him the question which she had turned about
like a dagger in her soul for days and nights with-
out number, whether he had really believed that
she deceived him? When Urquijo vehemently
protested that he had never believed it, all the
horror inspired by years of meaningless pain gath-
ered in Rand's face and voice, and she exclaimed:

" Then why did you say so? "

Urquijo did not answer the question, but de-
clared in the greatest agitation that for one who
loves there is no peace; that he in particular had a
very unhappy heart; that he constantly felt him-
self to be the least handsome, the least amiable,
the least significant of men, and therefore could
not believe in a woman's love.

That Rahel calls this his "old litany" shows
what an important part his want of self-confidence
had played in the conflict, and that she under-
estimated the genuineness of Urquijo's suffering.
He declared, for instance, again and again that it
seemed incredible to him that such a rare being
as Rahel could love a man like him. Thus Rahel,
who was hoping for a drop of consolation, that he
might at last see and acknowledge her love, did
not obtain it. As she herself says, Urquijo
thought she wanted reparation for her feminine

Love 127

virtue, and that he gave her. But what she was
longing for with her whole burning soul — repara-
tion for her love — was not forthcoming.
/ And the idea never occurred to her, who saw him
glorious as a young god, that with him as with her
the frail wings of self-confidence had perhaps been
broken in childhood.

The only defence she found for him was that he
had killed her as innocently as "the axe that be-
heads a great man," since with his nature he
could not even divine the existence of such a
being as she was!

But she did not thereby explain the mystery,
she only removed it to the sphere of the
unconscious.

The delicate threads that with irresistible power
bind one human being to another were spun
thousands of years before we were born, by in-
numerable beings that have gone before and
countless mysterious influences.

When, in later years, others were surprised at

Rahel's love of a man with so many defects, she

I replied that no doubt she had always seen his

faults — for love, is not, as people thought, the

\blind god, but the most clear-sighted one — but

that such a perception had nothing to do with love.

128 Rahel Varnhagen

It was true that she had tried to "dissect this
love, so that it might never come to life again."
But she had not the strength to do it, for she was
seized by "the new European love" in all its
fateful might.

"I believe that if the director of this earth had wished
to give an example of this kind of love in all its trans-
formations and possibilities, in its highest power,
genuineness, and purity, combined with the highest
self-knowledge and thus in the highest degree con-
scious of its own torments, so as to reflect every pain
from the whole compass of the soul, as though it were
furnished with facets, — I believe that I should have
sufficed for this."

She is still without an answer to her own question,
why it should have been this man of all others who
for the first and only time in her life made her feel
"that fever of love, that perfect satisfaction in the
contemplation of his person. "

"This person, this being has exercised the greatest
magic over me, and consequently exercises it still. To
him I gave . . . my whole heart, and this can only
be given back by love and worthiness, otherwise one
never gets it again. Is there then a magic of curses?
Can one devote one's self to a devil? When he left
the room I fell down with a loud cry, my heart burst-
ting against my ribs, and asked God whether one can

Love 129

make away with one's heart, for he knew that without
a heart one can live no longer.

" . . .It seems as though he must leave me some-
thing that he has of me, and as though his love could
still kindle and heal me. ... Until I can love
some one more deeply ... I am deprived of the
part of me that is necessary to my happiness, the
source of my brightest, most intimate being is buried
under heavy curses and magic. "

"Ah, eternal fate, thou wilt remain true, so long as
the smallest fibre is left of me. True thou wilt ever
have been! True! True were the eternal things I
eternally wrote to the unfeeling one . . . true that
I found the symbol of my senses; that I threw away
my heart to him for ever ; true that he did not under-
stand me; true the frightful dissonance. How few
love! Of whole generations only one. . ."

" Oh, what a disease is love! How much caprice,
how much folly there is in it. . . . And this is
our real love — not the first — wherein not a speck of us
remains behind, wherein we honestly give the last
drop of our blood. It only remains to suffer honestly."

Rand's confessions of Urquijo's continued
power over her, here quoted and in part addressed
to Varnhagen, have an interesting parallel in a
letter which Mme. de Stae'l, then married to
Rocca, wrote to Benjamin Constant; a letter in
which she indirectly tells him that so long as her
heart beats, he will have a place in that heart
which no one else has had or can have.

9

130 Rahel Varnhagen

That a certain voice, a certain smile, a certain
look, a certain temperament above all other be-
ings, near or far, can force the one who loves them
to remain within their magic circle, even when that
magic circle is a circle of hell — that is the enigma.
And Rahel pondered over it as long as she lived.

But pondering may make the hair white with-
out bringing a spark of light into the irrationality
of love's nature. Nor did Rahel gain from all her
brooding over the fate of her love any knowledge
but this: "I know the disease, I have enjoyed it. "

In 1807 she still felt, not "as one wounded, but
as one destroyed," and knew that she could never
"grow together." But she was "not dead to
contact with the world," although she no longer
possessed that point of the soul "to which life
flows." Yet by degrees she felt that she was
alive, capable of enjoyment and amusement; in-
deed, she says that she had grafted on her heart
many a liking that she had no name for. She
begins to feel "calmness, broadness of vision, and
joy" through contemplation of herself. By de-
grees new growth has sprung up in the desert she
calls her heart; she has begun to find out that
"there is a clearness and happiness in and through

Love 131

ourselves"; that a heart full of "maltreated love"
may return to itself, to "its own inner country."
Indeed, she feels that "so long as one lives, one
loves, when one has once loved. And this afflic-
tion is moreover one of the best. I do not resist
my heart : therein lies my art. "

Rahel was not one of those poor, inert, and self-
centred natures that insist upon sorrowing, that
tear open their wounds as soon as they begin to
close.

A woman who in spite of all her sufferings pre-
serves her vivacity, who has "a gay spirit but a
sad heart," usually exercises a great attraction
upon youth. And just at this time Rahel gained
a new intimate in a young man who, like David
Veit, remained only a friend, but was a friend in
the fullest sense of the word. To him, as to Veit,
many of Rahel's most significant letters were
written.

This young jnan was Alexander von Marwitz,
belonging to a noble family whose estate was near
Berlin. He was twenty-two when he made Ra-
hel's acquaintance in 1809, and had lately aban-
doned a military career, which was not to his taste,
in order to live on his estate as an agriculturist

132 Rahel Varnhagen

and scholar. But, like most young men of a
serious turn of mind at his age, he was rendered
unhappy by the gulf between his ideal will and the
reality by which he was surrounded, between his
eager young powers and the insignificant aims to
which he could direct them. And his melancholy
took the form of thoughts of suicide.

In this gloom he found help in Rahel, of whom
he wrote in his admiring gratitude: "She must
surely be the greatest woman now on earth. "

She helped him not only with sympathy in his
suffering, but by letting him feel that he was
necessary to her. She taught him that natures
"with the double gifts, the twofold spirit" must
learn to bear solitude and find their consolation in
working for others, for the life of one who does no-
thing but complain is a miserable one. No doubt
it was true that the time offered no opportunity for
a great achievement, but it remained for all "to
do well what lay nearest. "

' ' You cannot escape the age. Every one is bound to
his time. Our time is that of consciousness, mirroring
itself to infinity, even to vertigo. . . ."

"To live, love, study, be diligent, marry, if it so
turns out, to perform every trifling act properly and
with life, that is in any case to have lived. ..."

But in order to impart this understanding and this

Love 133

advice, Rahel herself had had to gain the wisdom she
compresses into such words as these :

' ' The hardened heart, the soul prepared for every-
thing, which has nothing left but its own conscience,
can await its fate from this inmost point of being,
relying on itself."

"There is a universe, in it we develop. And it
matters not at all what fate is ours, when we have ar-
rived at the perception that development is our fate. "

What is here quoted shows how Rahel healed
her own wounds. And to help her friend to per-
ceive that a human being can bear greater pain
than his own youthful Weltschmerz, she did
not shrink from revealing to him her deepest
sufferings.

She was really successful in saving her friend,
of whom she says that his presence had become
to her "what the eye is to the world," so much
consolation and joy had he brought her during
a companionship, the nature of which she thus
characterised: "We live like two students, one of
whom is a woman."

And it was not as a suicide but as a hero, in the
struggle for liberty of 1813, that Marwitz ended
his life.

3

While Rahel was thus helping others she was

134 Rahel Varnhagen

still herself a sufferer. After the great volcanic
eruption she wrote: "There will always be a
Herculaneum to explore."

She was still buried in the ruins when she heard
outside her grave a young voice sing an alluring
song of new life.

It was during the agitated period of Rahel's
relations with Urquijo that Varnhagen saw her
for the first time at a house in Berlin, where he
was tutor. He regarded the celebrated Rahel with
interest, but at a distance; probably she hardly
noticed the youth of eighteen, otherwise than as a
member of the group of literary young men to
which her brother Leopold belonged.

Varnhagen von Ense was born at Dusseldorf on
February 21, 1785. His father was a medical
man, and at his death the fifteen-year-old boy
determined to follow the same profession. But
lack of means delayed his studies, and before they
were finished he had changed his plans more than
once.

His second post as tutor was at Hamburg. And
there he fell in love with the mother of his pupils,
Fanny Herz, a widow and several years his senior.
As she returned his inclination, it led to a secret

Love 135

engagement. This lasted during the years of his
studentship, so that he was still engaged to Fanny
Herz when in 1807 he met Rahel for the second
time, again in her circle of acquaintance in Berlin.
She at once made a powerful impression on him,
and his presentiment of her unique excellence
became certainty when he saw the unqualified
admiration, nay, reverence, with which his great
teacher Schleiermacher treated Rahel. Varn-
hagen afterwards saw her at Fichte's lectures.
But it was not until the spring of 1808 that he
ventured one day to approach Rahel in the course
of a walk and to enter into a conversation, in which
he succeeded in interesting her so much that she
asked him to call.

Rahel, who was then thirty-seven, at first looked
upon the twenty-three-year-old Varnhagen as a
young man whom, like Marwitz, she could assist
in the battle of life. But she soon found that her
experience with Bokelmann was repeated, and that
a soulful youth gave his enthusiasm the name of
love. And, as before, she regarded this erotically-
tinted enthusiasm as a transient emotion and at
first could only herself feel that calm sort of love
which consisted in joy over the youth himself and
gratitude for his sympathy.

136 Rahel Varnhagen

But the result was different and Varnhagen
acquired an importance in her life which surpassed
that of Bokelmann as much as Urquijo's im-
portance surpassed that of Finckenstein.

Varnhagen was one of those men, rare then as
now, to whom the element of soul in love out-
weighs, or at least counterbalances, that of the
senses; to whom psychological interest is the
strongest intellectual passion, and in whom
mental receptivity is greater than creative power.
Goethe calls Varnhagen a "separating, searching,
discriminating, and criticising nature, " and this
description covers a whole class. It is in general
men of this type who form the little group just
mentioned — those who love the feminine personal-
ity. Exceptions may no doubt be found, above
all, Goethe. But as a general rule men who are
full of their own force are not transported in
their whole being by the feminine life of the soul
and feminine qualities. A man who is power-
fully creative and sunk in his own world does
not often afford the woman he loves the hap-
piness of feeling herself understood and appre-
ciated in her most personal qualities; to him she
is always the sexual creature. The unproductive,

Love 137

or but slightly productive observer more frequently
proves an eager listener to a woman's soul, more
delicately responsive, more rapidly vibrating.
Such men often have many women friends and,
if their outward appearance is not unmanly,
they also inspire profound erotic feelings. The
feminine life of the soul has for them the same
attraction as the physical woman for the mascu-
line majority; for they are provided with a new
sense: a sense of the woman-soul. Often it is
men of just this kind who in youth do not feel
attracted by young girls. To their own refined
sensitiveness, their intellectual maturity, their
passion for culture, above all culture of the soul,
their interest in psychological inquiry, young
girls appear too undeveloped or indeterminate or
insignificant. And this is even more the case
since, before the age of twenty, and often even
longer, the most soulful young women conceal
the individuality they are forming as shyly as
certain buds conceal their colour until the flower
is fully open. In women of a maturer age, on the
other hand, the young men we are speaking of
find more readily the completed personal charac-
ter, the complicated life of the soul, intensified by
experience, the refinement of sensation, the many-

138 Rahel Varnhagen

sided culture, which to them form the greatest
attraction in a feminine being. And since women
in our time, owing to the richer, freer life they
are able to lead, preserve both their outward
and inward youthfulness better than formerly,
love affairs and marriages between men of this
type, but also of other types, and women older
than themselves are becoming more and more
usual.

No sign of the times is more significant of the
evolution of man's love than this. For this love
has then, in most cases, run the same course as
that of the soulful woman ; it has first kindled the
soul, and the flame of the soul has kindled the
senses.

No doubt it happens not unfrequently that
such a man is seized in his maturer years with love
for a young woman. From the point of view of
the race this is even desirable, and sometimes,
perhaps, the older woman is prepared to have to
repay, by a final renunciation, the second spring-
time her life has received. In any case, connec-
tions of this kind between younger men and older
women often assist in a high degree the develop-
ment of both. Nietzsche went so far as to re-
commend them. They are only "unnatural,"

Love 139

as the thoughtless call them, when the woman re-
tains the man, either by the brute force of the
law or by the more delicate means her grief can
command. So long as coercive marriage exists —
and until human beings have reached that stage
of development when they will no more retain
with them a loved one with the corpse of his love
within him, than they would keep his dead body
itself — so long will unions between men and wo-
men, where the difference in age is great, be never-
theless frequently unnatural, not in their early,
but in their later stages. But in our time we see
more and more often an enduring happiness
achieved either by an older woman and a younger
man or the reverse, when these persons possess
a true sense of responsibility with regard to the
success of their life's experiment and a true per-
ception of the means whereby love may be kept
alive.

In these, as in so many other respects, Rahel
was far ahead of her time. She understood from
the very beginning that perfect mutual freedom
and frankness are the only ties that bind.

Perhaps the greatest power over women of the
men just described lies in their boundless need of

140 Rahel Varnhagen

women. These Don Juans of the soul are not
wholly captured, as Rahel said of Varnhagen
later, by any particular woman; but the whole
female sex captures them all the more irresistibly.
Everywhere they find women to whom they can
confess their adventures, complain of their suffer-
ings ; who console them when their sensitiveness is
wounded, support them when their self-confidence
fails. Woman is the mirror in which their self-
contemplation shows them their own image magni-
fied, or the oil their working-machinery cannot
dispense with.

And this is confirmed in Varnhagen's relations
to Rahel. He met her at the time when, in addi-
tion to the wide and gracious receptivity of his
own nature, he also had that of youth; when his
many-sided culture and intellectual maturity were
far in advance of his years, while his personality
was still a chaos of mutually conflicting pro-
pensities, desires, and feelings. In the matter of a
career, no less than in that of his view of life and
his love, he was seeking that which accorded with
his true nature. And now through Rahel he felt
himself "as though raised at a stroke to a higher
plane of life." He was confronted by a nature
that was the opposite of his own ; a nature as pro-

Love 141

nounced as it was complete in its individuality.
This nature was, moreover, that of a woman, a
woman whose perfect frankness permitted him to
look into the depths of her soul and whose bound-
less generosity could only be compared with her
inexhaustible wealth.

Varnhagen thus describes his first impression of
Rahel: " A slight, graceful figure, small, but strongly
built, with strikingly small hands and feet. Her face,
surrounded by a wealth of black hair, gave evidence
of intellectual superiority ; the rapid, but firm glances
of her dark eyes left one in doubt whether they gave
or received more; an expression of suffering lent a
gentle charm to the clear features. She moved almost
like a shadow in her dark dress, but freely and firmly,
and her greeting was as unconstrained as it was
friendly. But what surprised me most was her voice,
sonorous, soft, sounding from the inmost soul, and the
most wonderful speech I have ever heard. In easy
unpretending sentences, of the most original humour
and turn of mind, were united naivete" and wit,
severity and amiability, and all this was infused with a
deep veracity, hard as iron, so that even the strongest
felt at once that it would not be easy to twist or break
anything in her utterances. At the same time a
beneficent warmth of human kindness and sympathy
allowed even the humblest to rejoice in her presence. "

And Varnhagen describes their early intercourse
thus: "Infinitely charming and fruitful was this
springtime of an enchanting companionship, to which

142 Rahel Varnhagen

I too contributed the best I had .... Our confi-
dential intimacy increased day by day. . . . Far
from meeting with approval in everything, I was often
blamed, and could guess at further displeasure which
was left unspoken ; yet I could feel that her sympathy
for me did not suffer thereby, but rather increased,
and this gain prevented me from taking the rest to
heart. ... It was vouchsafed to me to look into
the richest life . . . . "

. . . " This life appeared indestructibly young and
strong, not only as regards the mighty spirit that
soared freely above the waves of daily life, but also as
to the heart, the senses, the veins, the whole bodily ex-
istence, which was all immersed in freshness and
brightness; and the purest, most refreshing present
stood between a perfected past and "a future rich
in hope."

There was nothing irresistible in Varnhagen' s
exterior. He was tall and fair, with wavy hair
about a lofty, intelligent forehead; blue-gray,
observant, but yet gentle eyes; a delicate nose
with sensitive nostrils; a still more delicate and
sensitive mouth. His whole appearance was
agreeable without being out of the common;
the weakness that the face exhibits in later years
was probably even more apparent in youth. Such
as he was, he exercised no fascination upon Rahel.
She herself has said that her wounded and out-
raged heart had no strength to love alone; that it

Love 143

was his love that won her; that she was ashamed so
long as he loved alone, but when she saw that he
really loved, that he had found the inmost con-
tinuity of her being, then she on her side did not
restrain her heart. But, she continues, her feeling
was now not only gratitude for his gifts but emo-
tion at his love. This would have been repugnant
to her, if she had not also discovered his "love-
charm" ; if her heart's highest flame had not united
with his. Rahel's last love is a confirmation of
the Danish poet Paludan-Muller's words: that
our heart is like the violin, which, once broken,
gives a better tone but a weaker sound.

She had, of course, twice encountered love.
But the first time it had not been so strong that
the jealousy and prejudice of petty feminine
souls could not conquer it ; nor was it so fiery the
second time that her lover's own jealousy and pre-
judice could not quench it. She had, of course,
had many friends. But these had sought her on
their own account, because they needed conso-
lation or strength or stimulation. In a word, she
had either been loved without being understood,
or understood without being loved; sought after
and delighted in like a great and rare phenomenon.
But no one had ever surrounded her with the feel-

144 Rahel Varnhagen

ing that delivers us from loneliness, that is a
loving comprehension of what is unique and in-
dividual in our soul. In her deepest sorrow Rahel
had learned that people understand each other so
little that they do not even hear the wailing
"that bursts forth from the breast of each, " or, if
we hear it, we cannot help even those we love
the best, whom we wholly understand, and whose
sufferings torture us.

. . . "We are lonely. This cell, in which every
human soul is held and where love now and then
marries life to life, this is what makes us grow stiff. "

But of all the manifestations of Rahel's feel-
ing of loneliness, none is more significant than the
fact that she, who "was a disciple of Shakespeare, "
was early and often occupied with thoughts of
death. But never had her own death moved her;
never had she thought that her death "would hurt
a single person. From you," she wrote to Varn-
hagen, "I learned it; and it was for the first time
in my life that I thought it and knew that I had
thought it. So lonely have I lived. "

Varnhagen, the born student of human nature,
not only observed Rahel with the most eager in-
terest, but absorbed her with the most implicit

Love 145

devotion. With a knowledge of self extraordinary
for his years, he was aware of his own fundamental
defect: "My spirit came quite poor into the
world ... no spring wells up in me. ... I am
empty." But with equal clearness he perceives
his chief qualities: receptivity, intelligent and
profound assimilation of the thing received,
strength to admire, and strength to wait.

"I am a slender thread by the side of your beautiful,
tall tree, I know it. And I almost despair at my want
of strength, which is thus placed by love beside your
bubbling, strong-flowing life; I feel my poverty in
every sense through your richness. ..."

"But in this complete emptiness I always remain
open : a ray of sunshine, a movement, a form of beauty
or merely of strength never escapes me; I simply
wait for something to happen, like a beggar by the
roadside. , . . "

"You traverse every sphere, whilst I move only in a
few. . . . But when you visit mine, you will al-
ways find me, and if you enter a house where I cannot
follow, I shall wait quietly by the door. . . . "

The last-named quality is the rarest of all,
among people in general and young people in
particular. It depends upon the power of losing
one's self so completely in the person one loves
that one can wait with absolute confidence the

146 Rahel Varnhagen

unravelling through that person herself of what-
ever may seem unreasonable, unjust, or incom-
prehensible in her. And Rahel caused Varnhagen,
as he did her, not a few difficulties, especially by
her unqualified frankness. It is characteristic of
this that several of her already quoted confidences
on the subject of her feeling for Urquijo were
made to Varnhagen, between 1808 and 1812,
and equally characteristic that she often directed
her penetrating criticism against Varnhagen him-
self. But his belief in Rahel stood every test.

Rahel, who felt too exhausted by suffering to
believe in the possibility of a personal happiness,
awoke day after day with growing wonder and
emotion at this new thing that had come to her.

During the summer of 1808, she lived at Char-
lottenburg, which was then rural. Varnhagen went
there every afternoon to exchange ideas and ex-
periences, while they walked in the cool, flower-
scented park, or beneath the avenues and along
the bank of the Spree, or on the shady green be-
fore the house. The moon rose, the stars came
out, but their conversation continued, with or
without words. And Rahel felt the atmosphere
about her transformed by this intimate under-

Love 147

standing, which every soulful person dreams of,
seeks in friendship and love, and hardly ever finds.
But when we have found it, there is no more
need of disguises or masks, protective armour or
weapons of defence. Then we are transported to
Paradise, where the air is always mild, naked-
ness always natural, weapons always needless, for
there we move like a happy child in the warmth
of loving eyes. The richer, the more complicated
a person's nature is, the more difficult is it for
him to find this all-loving comprehension. But
if he finds it, it will transform existence as the
spirit of a walk is transformed, when we leave
the hot, dusty highway and turn into the mossy,
sun-flecked, perfumed woods; as the atmosphere
is transformed when a leaden sky is cleft and a
flood of sunlight is poured over the earth ; as the
landscape is transformed when, at a sudden turn
of the road, we leave the Alps behind us and see
Italy at our feet, in the season of vines and roses.
He who has experienced this, if only for a day,
can divine what Rahel felt, when she first heard
steps approaching "the calm, unvisited lake in the
depths of the soul," when she no longer felt her-
self lonely, when by degrees she was filled by the
sunshine of all-embracing, all-penetrating sympa-

148 Rahel Varnhagen

thy, when she encountered a longing that desired
her being in all its transitions, with all its an-
omalies and mutability. Rahel speaks of their
companionship, "our dear, gay, childish, happy
intercourse, our running, eating, enjoying the air
and hunting for pleasure; our unassuming exist-
ence without plan or aim . . ."; and what she
lays stress on as the best of all was that it never
occurred to them " to try to imagine anything. "

Before she had found Varnhagen she wrote: "I
know excellent people. And they are friendly to-
wards me and like to see me as they would look upon
a rock, a mass of clouds, a stormy sea or the like.
None of them harbours the human being in me, with
whom, however, they all seek shelter."
... " You are the only one in the whole world who
has ever been fond of me, who has treated me as I treat
others. Yes, I gladly confess this to you with all the
impulse of gratitude : of you I have learned to be loved,
and you have created something new in me. It is
not vanity, . . . that continually penetrates my be-
ing with satisfaction, that you must know — you, whose
right understanding of me forces the tears to my eyes —
it is at last the healthy, strong, true, real conception of
the soul. // takes and gives, and so a true life is born
to me ! Rejoice, if you really value me and look upon
my life and being as something out of the ordinary:
you have put the stamp of humanity on it. "

"What I love in you is, that you appreciate my

Love 149

nature and that your appreciation reveals itself, acts
and expresses itself as it does. I return your love
with extreme affection, as you have seen a hundred
times. ..."

And later : "Only one in the whole world recognises
my claim to be a personality, and does not wish merely
to use and swallow up some part or other of me ; loves
me as nature created me and fate distorted me;
understands this fate; is willing to leave me the re-
mainder of my life, and to gladden it and draw it
nearer to heaven; and, for the happiness of being my
friend, will be, do, and leave all for me. This is the
man who is called my bridegroom."

Varnhagen describes his impression of that sum-
mer in the words : " I feel as if I had spent the sum-
mer in Athens. " In Rahel's conversation he had
found the loftiest speculation, "as this must take
form in life, the inmost marrow of philosophy,"
and he felt that he came from her with liberated
powers, with "a newly-illuminated nature"; that
she had revealed to him what was deepest and
best in himself. "Your influence flows in me un-
brokenly, in a thousand streams, " he wrote.

But just as Rahel had emptied the urn that con-
tained the ashes of the past and again approached
the altar, whence she might take new fire, just as
she had carried her heart, as one carries a child
after a winter's illness, out into the green grass

150 Rahel Varnhagen

of May, the "passionate suspense" that she had
feared began to be felt in this relationship, as in
the others. She, who thought she had done with
life and expected nothing from it but " a little sun-
shine, fresh air, and green leaves" and who could
thus look forward "cheerfully and without con-
straint" to the morrow, now felt that the day was
no longer her own: "This godlike feeling, my only
happiness, is mine no more. " And the reason was
that Varnhagen, on account of his awakening love,
his desire of winning hers, his fear of being un-
worthy of her, his continued feeling for the lady he
was engaged to, and his connection with her, was so
unbalanced that she felt him to be hostile to her
and their intercourse to be "strangely jarring and
painful. "

"You treat me like a mine: with pick-axes, crow-
bars, and tools you try to get something out of me that
I withhold, you try to remove the slag, crush, burn,
break up, and thus purify it for your use! But sup-
posing it were otherwise, and you were crushing a
plant? ..."

" I feel oppressed and anxious at having to perform
something, ashamed and vexed at not being able to do
it . . .

And so this pain broke in upon Rahel, that she
had allowed her sleeping heart to wake, only to

Love 151

see it killed anew ; that she had hardly begun to feel
that Varnhagen had become indispensable to her,
before she was faced by the possibility of losing him.
And the danger of this was twofold: it came from
her own past and from his. For Rahel did not
conceal from him that neither he nor any one else
could evoke a passion such as Urquijo had in-
spired in her, and she made it clear to him that
any claims in this direction would only disturb
the beauty of the new feeling that was growing up
between them. She lets him read all her letters
to Urquijo, although she feels that perhaps this
will part them. But in giving him the letters she (/
warns Varnhagen against being too ready to let
her go. For in her he would lose a world ; nowhere
would he find any one with whom life would be
easier and more manifold, inmost fidelity more
sincere, security and harmony greater. For it was
true that she was "nothing in any particular di-
rection, but she knew, as surely as one knows of
one's own existence, that the good in her was
unique." And not only that, but she knew that
her sentiment for Varnhagen was growing, that
the pain of losing him would be greater than all
that had gone before. But this does not prevent
Rahel, when he begins to speak of his continued

152 Rahel Varnhagen

feeling for Fanny Herz, of the intimate letters he
was still writing to her, of her waiting for him, of
his sorrow for her suffering, from acting in full
concord with her principles, since these were one
with her nature. In her bitter grief at having once
more come pure and honest and being obliged to
go away "poor and injured," the thought no
doubt flashed through her that this time she would
not give way, that she would hold her own against
this woman who was her inferior. But Rahel,
pure and serious as a flame, soon gave up this
idea. Varnhagen, with his lamentations over the
perplexity to which he could see no issue, in which
he could choose neither Rahel nor Fanny, seemed
to her an object of pity rather than of scorn.
Perhaps he was right in saying that he was a
"hyper-modern" person, that he could really love
two women at the same time, that he required
many love affairs as he required many friends.
He was one of the " disintegrated moderns, the
sick Europeans" and he had to follow his nature,
as Rahel hers. She acknowledges that with her
extremely explosive nature she could no doubt be
hasty, abrupt, unjust, but "how should one perse-
cuted by God be amiable?" In spite of the ship-
wreck that had stranded her in the region the

Love 153

ancients called hell, she had yet had courage to
venture once more upon the same ocean. And
she felt that this very courage, the strength of her
poor, lonely, ill-treated heart to love again, made
her a very wonderful being and that her own power
of giving much involved her right to make great
claims. Not of fidelity. It is true that she calls
love and fidelity one and the same, but she imme-
diately explains that this does not mean that a
so-called love cannot come to an end. This is
just what shows it to have been an illusion.

"Our senses then claim something better, and our
heart has not been touched, nor has it affected the
rest of our soul. . . . That which we retrieve for
ourselves is no fidelity, but that is fidelity which re-
sides securely deep in our heart together with our
blood. . . "

She knows that she herself is one of those who
can do nothing else but love, for whom love
is their "masterpiece, their crown, their life,
and their proof of authenticity." He would not
be able to tear fidelity out of her heart without
tearing her heart itself to pieces, without turning
all its blood to tears and without transforming
himself so that she lost her faith in him! Varn-
hagen had given her happiness, and whether

154 Rahel Varnhagen

this was to be lasting or not made no difference to
its reality. If his happiness was still with her,
then she would be mad with bliss, but without
his happiness, his presence could give her no joy.
And finally she exclaims: "Oh, understand me!
If I could hold your head and kiss you, you would
understand me."

What she asks is only that he shall make his
choice. For, in spite of Rahel's certainty that
"where two hearts beat as one, there is serious-
ness"; in spite of her knowledge that "the inmost
heart is wiser than all else, " it was possible that
she was mistaken and that Varnhagen's fiancee
was his "real life-pulse." And therefore Rahel
felt but one duty : that of giving Varnhagen his full
freedom and insisting on his going to Hamburg
and putting his feelings to the test by a renewed
companionship with Fanny Herz. She only gave
him one piece of advice characteristic of herself:
" Have no conscience ! "

Neither his sympathy with Rahel's nor with
Fanny's suffering ought to have any influence with
him, but only considerations of what he perceived
to be his true happiness.

" You must be free, and you are free. You are bound
by no word to me, no utterance, no hope you have

Love 155

given. . . . Your longing, your love for me alone can
make me happy; a bond that holds you, never, never!
With me you are like a bird on its branch. ..."

"You must see her, this woman, must live wjth her.
If there are wounds, they must be perfectly healed:
either by a happy life together or by sheer separation.
I would rather not see you again first. Every night
I grow stronger, firmer, purer, more resolute, more
self -penetrating ; I can bear nothing weak, wounded,
ambiguous, sick, or pitiful in my soul. ..."

"If you love me, all will come right. I can no longer
struggle with or for anything, and a conquered
happiness has always disgusted me. ..."

"You think me hard? I am, unhappy woman!
And always towards myself! I would not show you
two suffering women and so showed you one hard as
iron. Even now, when you must leave me, I will not
complain. If you come, I shall be glad. I am not
fond of hesitation: that is the limit of my nature. "

She can face without any rage of jealousy the
possibility of losing him, but only if he thereby
attains a greater happiness. For a feeling that is
quenched, for a false idea of duty, she will not
allow herself to be sacrificed. If he leaves her, she
and the happiness he has given her will remain
hers for ever.

"You are to enjoy love and happiness and bright-
ness. . . . This is no exaggerated, sentimental,
self-sacrifice on my part. I set no value on divid-

156 Rahel Varnhagen

ing and sacrificing. But if you really loved, I would
help to crown you! ..."

' ' I return your love with extreme affection, as you
have seen a hundred times; I could spend my life
with you, that is my ardent and serious, now my
only desire; I should devote it to you with joy and the
greatest satisfaction; I recognise your whole value, and
not a grain of your amiability, accurately weighed,
escapes me. I am faithful to you from inclination,
from love, and from the best-considered choice. I
have no claims upon you. I am your friend, as a man
might be. You are in no respect bound by me. I
should wish to serve you with my blood. And is it
not natural that at last I should wish to be acknow-
ledged? and it is only through you that I am acknow-
ledged clearly .... But do not think that I love
you entirely without anxiety. The possession of you
is necessary to me in every sense. But where satis-
faction has been, there it remains. And in every loss,
in every need, it would always give me support. I
have possessed life's happiness. "

She makes no pretence of heroism, she openly
expresses the feeling of loss that prevents her en-
joying nature, light and shade, all that they have
enjoyed together, as though she wished to com-
municate to him every word, every gleam of sun-
shine that delights her. She tells him that simply
by coming into her life he has become "a gleam of
sunlight over the whole horizon of the life she has

Love 157

yet to live"; he has given her a sense of health,
pride, satisfaction; she feels that the magic circle
of her fate has been broken and now she has
courage to lose him and live on. If it is right
for him to leave her, then he should do so; then
she would lose him as inevitably as the flower
falls from the tree and the tree is nevertheless
able to endure the winter.

" Ought I to murder myself in advance, because I am
mortal?. . . . It is stupid to be afraid; is not the
present moment also future? We always want the
future to be so beautiful, so certain! "

There is no period of Rahel's life which throws
clearer light on her nature than this. An ordinary
selfish woman, in the given circumstances, would
have done everything to keep Varnhagen in
Berlin and with alternate coolness and warmth
would have aroused his jealousy and his passion.
An ordinary unselfish woman, in the given cir-
cumstances, would have sacrificed herself to his
so-called "duty" to his fiancee.

Rahel does neither. She sends him to Ham-
burg, but keeps, through her letters and the
frank expression of her feelings, the power she
has won; his presence there gives his fiancee the

158 Rahel Varnhagen

same chance, and his fate is to be decided by the
sacrifice of neither, but only by his own choice.

She said herself that she awaited the crisis as
one awaits that of a fever ; but until he had decided,
one way or the other, she would not see him again.

At Hamburg, Varnhagen found that his feel-
ing for Fanny grew fainter day by day ; that their
misunderstandings increased; that, even if there
had been no Rahel, their relationship could never
be resumed, and he had definitely broken it off
when he returned to Rahel.

But now new difficulties appeared, due to
Varnhagen's possessing neither fortune nor posi-
tion and to his being both unable and unwilling to
unite Rahel's lot with his, until he was something
more than a student, whose studies even were not
concluded. Rahel agreed with him in this, and
thus during their engagement they remained sepa-
rated, except for brief periods, while Varnhagen,
as student, soldier, and diplomatist, completed his
education and established his position, so that he
might be able to offer Rahel something more than
his devoted soul.

During these years of uncertainty and sepa-
ration Rahel applied more and more perfectly
her great principle of married life: "Be true and

Love 159

grow gentle"; the principle which she has also
formulated at greater length in these words:

' ' See, love, understand, wish for nothing, adapt one's
self, even when not in fault ; reverence the greatness
of existence, do not harass, invent, and improve and
be cheerful and ever more kind! "

This was not always easy during the six years
of Varnhagen's Odyssey, for his indecision, lack of
method, and uncertainty caused Rahel not only
sorrow, by failure of arrangements for meeting,
for instance, but also practical difficulties and
personal unpleasantness. She on her side has the
tender sensitiveness of one who has twice been
mortally wounded. She prefers to withdraw rath-
er than constantly to renew her sufferings, and
she is so afraid of binding or hindering him that a
man with less psychological insight than Varn-
hagen would have thought her cold.

It is very significant that she never feels the
difference in their ages as a hindrance. For on
the one hand she looked for a long time younger
than he did, on the other she felt with one of her
friends that between lovers "les dmes sont toujours
du meme dge. " What she feared was that she had
suffered too much, that she no longer had elasti-
city, courage, confidence enough for happiness.

160 Rahel Varnhagen

And what she knew was that she was no longer
capable of only giving, making no demands.

"I have atoned sufficiently here on earth, with my
whole earthly life, for the lie that I did not claim what
I desired and gave. "

No doubt Rahel is sometimes over-hasty in her
censure, but she willingly acknowledges her in-
justice and Varnhagen makes this easy for her by
the touching amiability with which he receives her
strictures, even when they are undeserved. He
felt that in a broad sense she was right in drawing
his attention to what she called his "life-pauses":
the instances of rudeness or indelicacy or hasti-
ness whereby he made enemies; and when she
blamed his "everlasting habit of pouring himself
out" to every one he met, his weakly need of
sympathy and his want of independence.

His lack of fixity and repose was due in great
measure to the conditions of the time. But they
often cause Rahel to wonder whether the earth
only existed for her to "weep, be enraptured, and
love" in, but never to strike root in.

Since Varnhagen, also a disciple of Goethe,
understood the word culture in its deepest sense —
as the education which penetrates and transforms

Love 161

the whole man — he was capable of loving Rahel's
unsparing frankness, even when she pointed out
the unfertile fields in his own nature, which he
ought to cultivate. Nothing is more descriptive
of Rahel's feeling during the first years of their
engagement than the following beautiful words:
"Ah, how I rejoice over your development!
Dear chalice, what wilt thou not contain, warmed
at my breast, by my love! I am so happy and so
proud and so uneasy. My spirit and my heart
have a child! This child is my beloved!" And
in truth she was to him mother and sister, friend
and mistress ; she exhaled genius and goodness up-
on him ; her devotion was as clear-sighted and wise
as it was tender and active.

Her feeling is genuine and warm even in all the
little things by which she shows how he is always
present to her ; as, for instance when she has eaten
something that he would have liked, or enjoyed
the air, or taken a pleasant walk. And she is de-
lighted when similar things appear in his letters.
Thus he once had a hard wooden bench to sleep on
at night, and thought: "If Rahel knew of this!"
These words were enough to illumine her soul, "like
summer lightning," with bright happiness. For
they "were a witness of intimate, confiding, de-

1 62 Rahel Varnhagen

voted love, and knowledge of being loved again.
If she had been there, how she would have kissed
him on the hard bench ; how she would have made
it comfortable for him, for he would have had her
shoulder to lean against. ..."

In many ways Rahel shows that she does not
love him "without uneasiness," and on his ex-
pressing some doubt she exclaims : " Have you then
never seen the transport in my eyes, when I looked
into yours? The stifling stream of blissfulness
that then came over me ? ' '

It is true that she is still "inaccessible" in her
soul and sees that "every one carries about with
him this patrimony from other worlds." She
knew that even love cannot penetrate into the
doubts of the soul, the questionings of conscience,
or the depths of memory. But otherwise she felt
the glow of love through her whole being, and she
could say with truth to Varnhagen: "You have
won my feeling, my whole heart. " Indeed, with-
out her love she seems to herself shadowy and of no
account ; on the days when she has not written to
him she has not lived at all, and "to kiss his mouth,
his eyes, to press him to her heart " is her most
ardent longing. Varnhagen on his side shows in a
thousand ways the truth of his words: "I love

Love 163

you so boundlessly and intensely, as neither lovers
nor friends are loved: as your disciple and pro-
phet." He wonders whether she can suffer so
much as he from their separation, since she has —
Rahel, for whom he is always longing! He hun-
gers for every line of hers and asks her to let him
see what she writes even to others, for he covets
her slightest words, whether they reveal the depth,
the nobility, or the gaiety of her temperament, of
which he confirms Jean Paul's judgment, that
great as were Rahel's wisdom and wit, they were
yet of less importance than her warmth and good-
ness. "With you," says Varnhagen, "even the
commonplace becomes uncommon, through the
genuineness that radiates from your every mani-
festation of life. " And he hit upon one among his
many happy expressions for Rahel's personality —
its firmness, unity, its perfectly- rounded complete-
ness— when he said that she ought properly to
be represented plastically. He tells her that,
when her letters arrive, he first lets them lie be-
fore him unopened for a little while. For the
letter bears with it a ray of her presence, and to
see it and touch it in its outer form gives him a
little of that bliss he felt when he could look into
her eyes and kiss her lips. And in the same way

1 64 Rahel Varnhagen

Varnhagen expresses most perfectly his own feel-
ing for Rahel' s nature when he says that she is to
him what the Bible is to Christians ; the thought of
her follows him everywhere, it is the light of his
life and embraces the whole circle of his know-
ledge, his joys, and his sorrows. She, the ever
healthy and creative, sows the fields of his soul
with her living words; each one of them shoots up
within him and becomes a full ear, from which
he derives his sustenance. He rejoices that,
when their letters cross, it often happens that
they contain the same thought, written down
by each independently of the other; for in
this he sees to what a degree they belong to
each other, how they delight in the same things, as
they also understand jest and earnest in the same
way.

And, he writes, like the jet of a fountain the
desire continually rises within him of seeing every-
thing with her, hearing her speak of everything,
seeing her life sink into everything and come forth
again in full flower. " You are so rich," he says,
" that twenty such as I would be needed only to
form a pair of eyes as seeing as yours, and in my
whole head there is not so much life as in your
little finger! " By all roads his thoughts, dreams,

Love 165

and plans arrive at her, whose mere existence is
to him a festival of triumph.

" That my life was able to win you and has won
you, makes it in my eyes one of the most favoured
that has ever been lived upon earth, " says Varn-
hagen.

But we may reverse the saying and put it that
only a rare nature could have won Rahel, and there
is no surer evidence of the worth of what was
essential in Varnhagen's nature than the fact that
he before all others understood Rahel with the
perfect comprehension of love. With his weak-
nesses in public life we have nothing to do here.
In one thing he was great: his great love. To
have been capable of such an emotion is a man's
patent of nobility, his eternal life. Every one who
reads with seeing eyes the correspondence be-
tween Varnhagen and Rahel knows, too, that it is
always the sun of genuine love that shines upon
Rahel's existence, though at a different season.
It was no longer spring, as with her feeling for
Finckenstein, nor high summer, as with Urquijo,
but September, the season when cold and poverty
have not yet appeared, when the heat is gone but
the warmth remains, when the air is cool and soft
as silk, the sky deep blue and the sunshine more

1 66 Rahel Varnhagen

golden than ever, when the gardens are brilliant
with richly-coloured flowers and ripening fruit falls
upon the dewy grass, when peace and plenty are
united as at no other season.

And Rahel expressed this peace and plenty in
love by the simplest, and greatest, of all words of
love: "With you near me I could part from life,
freed from pain. "

The more intimately their souls were united, the
more keenly did Varnhagen feel his daily loss in be-
ing separated from Rahel, for the fervid sponta-
neity of whose companionship no letters could
make amends. At last the time arrived when,
in Rahel' s words, they could have their love
forged "on the plebeian anvil," as a condition of
"being allowed to pass by the plebeians. " Varn-
hagen, like Rahel, thought it a miserable thing
that society should be "such a poor-house that it
has only this one form for the most widely diversi-
fied relationship, " and they both submit to the
form with the reservation that they are to "ignore"
the fact of their being married. Rahel insists both
before and after her marriage that, if Varnhagen
had not understood her "indescribable yearning

Love 167

for liberty, " if with him she had not been able to be
true in everything, if his ideas of the absurdity of
marriage had not been exactly the same as hers,
she would never have married him.

They were married as quietly as possible on
September 27, 1814, and shortly afterwards were
again separated, owing to Varnhagen's political
duties. The first five years of their married life
were spent partly in Vienna, partly in Carlsruhe
and elsewhere; a restless life, during which Rahel
longed more and more to return to Berlin. This
only became possible in October, 1819. But from
that time until her death she was never absent
except for very brief periods from the place that
she loved, since she had "suffered, loved, and
known " so much there. During the many periods
of separation incidental to these first years of
their married life, Varnhagen's letters are even
more ardent than before their union. More and
more during his life with Rahel does he discover
her "uniqueness"; she alone is in the fullest sense
good, inspired, beautiful, and true, and through the
"waves of love and life" she sends over him, she
is "the author of his happiness." And she ex-
claims that it is "a happiness to which one ought
to kneel" to receive such love-letters from one's

1 68 Rahel Varnhagen

husband ; they make her humble and uneasy that
she is not handsome enough, so that others perhaps
may blame Varnhagen's choice, but glad that she
looks so young. Otherwise this would have dis-
pleased her, for she preferred that age and looks
should keep pace. It is a source of wonder as well
as of happiness to her that Varnhagen, "through
some magic unknown to her, " is in love with her.

"I am so greatly loved and honoured by him that I
am ashamed before God and must constantly reflect
how I may be able to sweeten his life, so as to repay
him at least in part. But my greatest happiness con-
sists in this, that I am entirely unconscious of being
married! That I am perfectly free in all things, in
my life and feeling; that I can tell Varnhagen every-
thing, can be entirely true, and that just this so de-
lights and charms him. But he too is happy through
me, only through me. You ought to see and hear how
he expresses this in my presence and in writing to me.
When we see such things in books, we do not believe
them and say: This is only fiction. "

"I am on a perfectly free footing with him, other-
wise I could never have married him. His ideas of
marriage and mine are the same. ..."

"I acknowledge no relationship to be free and
beautiful if it restricts me, if it makes me lie or deny
my nature what is possible and necessary to it. "

And to Varnhagen she wrote: "As far as it was
possible — possible to your nature — to understand a na-
ture such as mine, you have understood me: through

Love 169

the noblest and most soulful recognition: with an in-
sight that I do not understand, since it is not due to
resemblances in our natures. It is impossible for any
person to adopt and deal with another more unself-
ishly, more magnanimously, with more understand-
ing than you have done with me. Never has insight
into a person taken such effect upon the very centre
of the will as your insight into me. This cannot
be more warmly acknowledged than by me, nor
can this acknowledgment be more completely trans-
formed into love. "

It is quite clear that Rahel was not in love with
Varnhagen in the truest meaning of the term, that
his personality did not fill her with the same trans-
port as hers did him. Possibly she was thinking of
her feeling for Varnhagen when she said:

"Not our first, as the proverb says, but our
last love is the true one: the one that commands
all our powers. "

But in that case the words were called forth
by the mood of a moment. For her feeling for
Varnhagen did not command all her powers. One
among many jproof s of this is the fact that it was
Varnhagen, not Rahel, who complained that Berlin
life hardly ever gave them a quiet hour together.

In the home they lived in longest,1 and until

1 Maurerstrasse 36; they lived at first at Franzosische
Strasse 20.

170 Rahel Varnhagen

Rahel's death, she delighted in the large and lofty
rooms, as she did in the garden of a neighbour,
where "there was air and fragrance, as in a forest-
er's lodge." In their apartment everything was
simple; a few portraits and busts were the only
things, besides flowers, that were not necessary.
But all the arrangements were so comfortable and
convenient that the whole impression was more
tasteful than great elegance could have made it.
That a piano and books were counted among
necessaries goes without saying.

Rahel was one of those women, still very un-
common, who combine an unfettered "living out
one's life" with order and regularity in all the re-
lations of everyday life; in this trait again she was
as far removed from the Romantic School as she
came near to Goethe.

On this point Rahel says some golden truths:
"Only the best people are punctual. Only the best
know that even the most highly-purified earthly
existence is subject to conditions and cannot be carried
on without the greatest regularity in the ordering of
the commonest things around us, and that only by
this can time be economised, which we can never
seize or recall ; only the best people submit themselves
to these conditions. ..."

' Le positif of life consists in living out what is imme-

Love 171

diately before us. ... To feel the present mo-
ment, to be able to deal with it, that is the art of
living ; the more we have of this in us, the more posi-
tive we shall be, and the more positive will be our
experiences. "

Through these qualities she was able, in spite of
increasing ill-health, in spite of her time being
"robbed, stolen, and torn to pieces," to keep the
house in excellent order, to see that Varnhagen
could work undisturbed, and still to find time for
her own more personal interests. But all this
required so great an expenditure of energy that
she sometimes sighed for solitude, that she might
be left in peace to be ill. For the desire of not
disquieting Varnhagen with her ill-health always
made her conceal it as long as possible.

Rahel, like other people of nervous nature,
was late in going to bed and in rising. She em-
ployed the morning hours in housekeeping and
other practical concerns, and in receiving visits.
Afterwards she took a walk, visited some art
exhibition or rehearsal, or made a few calls.
Guests were often invited to the somewhat late
dinner, or a visitor of the forenoon was asked to
stay on, and Rahel took pride in a good and re-
fined table. After dinner she was disinclined to

172 Rahel Varnhagen

receive visitors, but employed the time in reading
and writing letters. In the evening she often went
to some concert or theatre, and was frequently
accompanied home by a whole crowd of ac-
quaintances, who propounded their criticisms in
her drawing-room and listened to hers. The con-
versation was often so lively that the guests did
not leave before midnight. On the other hand,
if Rahel spent the evening at home, the visitors
arrived an hour or two earlier, but the evening
passed so pleasantly with conversation and music
that it lasted till an equally late hour.

It was her own experience that Rahel ex-
pressed in the words: "Finely-organised people
must have amusement, " and it was her delight to
offer this to others in its noblest form. She her-
self no doubt underrated her genius when she
asserted that her famous " social gifts were nothing
but kindness." But their most important part
was nevertheless the warmth that radiated from
her over every one, great or small, celebrated or
not.

Rahel in her inmost soul was a motherly nature.
Though herself deprived of true motherly affec-
tion, she says the most beautiful things of what

Love 173

motherhood ought to be. Motherliness forms an
essential part of her love, and she sums up her
nature in the words: "I am a mother without
children."

"Yesterday I was meditating on human suffering and
love, and thought : The greatest passion loses its black
magic, its mortal sharpness, when one has a mother
as she ought to be. . . . Then misfortune can
never come upon one so devastatingly, every re-
lationship becomes gentle and clear and must take a
purer form, and at the very beginning the evil gives
way before the worthy and lovable and departs into
'the night of the heart,' . . . as Fichte says. Imagine
a young, loving mother like me, the dearest friend, the
most intimate confidante of her children, their com-
panion in games, in music, society, dress, life, and
thoughts. Almighty Lord, what a close, sure support
this is! Such a mother is God's deputy on earth. O
God, there is a happiness in this confusion of misery
here below, but nobody performs his office and the
world goes to ruin. ..."

All children loved -Rahel as dearly as she loved
them; their own playmates could not play or laugh
with them better than Rahel. They always had
something to tell her and she to tell them, and to
be with Rahel was the greatest joy of her brother's
children, as it was hers to have them.

Jean Paul once expressed his opinion that she

174 Rahel Varnhagen

ought to have remained unmarried.1 She re-
plied that in these words he condemned marriage,
and that she would never submit to an unhappy
marriage.

"He who does violence to my inmost consent and
my inclination, will only keep me as a prisoner. "

If he meant that she and Varnhagen in an inner
sense were already married, and might thus re-
main unwedded in an outer sense, then she agreed
on her own behalf and on that of all those who be-
long to each other of necessity. But if Jean Paul
intended his words to be taken absolutely, he was
as much mistaken about her inmost nature as her
most malevolent censurers, for thereby he denied
her children.

Rahel' s marriage was childless; but she, who
thanked God for " every bit of childish innocence, "
found a compensation in her niece's little daughter,
Elise, who in Rahel's later years was the "medicine
of her soul." Her descriptions of their com-
panionship, of the little one's words, behaviour, and
emotions show how passionately she worshipped
this child. And when she had had the little girl

1 " She [Rahel] is an artist, she begins an entirely new sphere,
she is an exceptional being, in conflict with ordinary life and
raised high above it, and therefore she must remain unmarried."

Love 175

with her for a time, she felt her heart "dashed in
pieces" at having to send her and the other child-
ren back to their parents, after having at last been
able for eight whole weeks to live "with, for, and
only through them. " "I put flesh on them by my
care and made their souls grow and their minds
arise and bestir themselves." All day long she
had been at their disposal, and for half the day she
had been out with them in "wood, field, and gar-
den." But now that joy was over, and she was
left alone to grieve that others had what ought
to have been hers, what her love gave her a right
to. ... "It does not avail me to be past the age
of amorous love; / suffer nevertheless." This
is Rahel at fifty-nine, complaining to the young
Heine.

In another letter to Gentz she speaks of still
having a "love-heart; I love a pure dewdrop from
heaven with a new tenderness, never felt before. "
She complains of being forced to suffer even in
this love, since the child in an outward sense does
not belong to Ker, although in an inward sense it
does. For the child has her blood, nerves, and
nimbleness of spirit, its "heart is tender and
strong." At the same time Rahel is glad that
Elise is unlike her in being graceful, pretty, and

176 Rahel Varnhagen

frivolous, and is thus "agreeable to God and
mankind!"

Rahel and Bettina Brentano have each given
a charming description of the other's way with
children, in Rahel's saying of Bettina that she
behaved with them " like a mythological nurse-
maid," and in Bettina's insisting that her child-
ren's governess should treat them "exactly as Frau
Varnhagen does. "

And the more ill-health limited Rahel's world to
her four walls, the more did her eyes find their de-
light and her heart its repose in that fragment of
eternally-young nature, a child.

Even from her childhood Rahel's strength of
will had sustained her through the physical weak-
ness and severe sufferings which would have turned
another woman into a selfish and fretful invalid, a
trouble to herself and to others. Instead, she
made use of these sufferings to help her "to be
better, to feel sympathy, not to be indifferent to-
wards the poor and afflicted." Even when in
physical pain she sustains her soul by "meditation,
insight, enthusiasm, joyousness, kindness, inno-
cence. " The years thin the ranks of relatives and
friends, but enough are left for a select little band

Love 177

to collect around her from time to time. And
some of the members of this circle satisfied at
home the thirst for music that Rahel could no
longer quench outside.

Some severe attacks of illness had already pre-
saged the change for the worse that took place in
Rahel' s condition at the beginning of 1833. After
a few weeks of fluctuation, neither her will to live
nor love could keep death back. She died on
March yth, two months before she would have
completed her sixty-second year.

Thus ended the nineteen years of a married life
of which Varnhagen testified that during it, and
after it, Rahel was always "the youngest and
freshest" part of his life.

Several years after Rahel's death Varnhagen
again expressed his astonishment

"at the unique combination of vital forces and virtues
she presented. In her the fire of primeval creative
force still burned with a bright flame ; she still had all
the warmth and brightness of a being fresh from God's
hand. I know nothing that is like her; talents and
powers others may have in equal or greater degree,
but none her spirit. She knew this well and said and
wrote to me: 'You will never see my like again.'
She was right. Sooner will a second Goethe, Spinoza,
Plato appear than another Rahel."

CHAPTER IV

RELIGION

THE ideas, which are called by preference re-
ligious, had always occupied Rahel. But, as is
often the case with young people, the sorrows and
joys of her own circumstances disturbed the calm
that is needed for meditation and piety. As one
grows older, life settles down of itself and, to the
soulful person, the questions of the meaning and
aim of life increase in importance with the shades
of evening. So it was with Rahel, who showed
herself more and more what she had been all her
life: one of those natures, religious in the pro-
foundest sense, to whom everything is religion,
but who, in Schiller's words, from religious motives
profess no religion.

She was born a Jewess and baptised a Christian
on her marriage, but gave her faith to neither
doctrine. She was almost a child when the two

men died, who, directly and indirectly, had re-

178

Religion 179

formed the position of the Jews — Moses Mendels-
sohn and Frederick the Great. But she was
already penetrated by the spirit of the new age, and
the peculiar features of either Judaism or Christi-
anity had no importance to her. On her death-
bed she said that she had been thinking of Jesus
and had felt for the first time that he was her
brother in suffering. Like Goethe, she reverenced
the person of Jesus, but they both remained cold
to the religion founded in his name.

So long as Schleiermacher was pantheistically
mystical, Rahel was with him. But when he
drew near to positive Christianity, she definitely
held aloof. Her soul foreshadowed to her a new
religion and she was convinced that the present
form of the Christian religion was "an almost
accidental phase in the development of the spirit,
and one that had lasted too long." And in a
profound observation she points out the incom-
patibility of Christianity with earthly life.

"This whole, doctrine arose and was invented in a
state of the soul that cannot last; it is the phase of
consecration and rebirth. ... It is really the
religion which, in its holiest form, ought of itself to
appear and work and live in every soul and which prop-
erly speaking ought not to be communicated. ..."

"Christianity is not adaptable for community of

i8o Rahel Varnhagen

practice or as a religion of duty. But since it made
demands of renunciation and self-sacrifice, it spread
like a passion over the world ; and it is worthy and
beautiful in those hearts where it reigns as a passion ;
but, when applied to the State and to life, it has been
perverse and a hindrance for ages. . . . "

Rahel has here laid stress both on what is
significant, at certain stages of the life of humanity
and of the individual, in the doctrine of the Cross,
and on the unreasonableness of this doctrine be-
ing imposed upon the race as its religion. Rahel,
like Goethe, like Schleiermacher, like the mystics,
sees the source of religion in one's own spirit; a
religion given from without is to her a contra-
diction in terms ; only the religion that comes from
the individual himself, springing from his being
and fashioned according to his needs, is genuine.
She insists that she herself can learn nothing,
"no religion either"; for religion is "the last
intimate act" between man and "that which I
may not name." As soon as this relation ac-
quires a name, the religion becomes untrue. The
great, divine, and infinite, Rahel — "savage" that
she was — had found out in her own way. And she
called it sin and blasphemy not to let every one
"make such discoveries for himself. "

Religion 181

To Rahel suffering was the way to her dis-
coveries, in religion as in other things. "The
heart must break or be illumined," she says of
her brooding over grief, and herein she gives the
reason why religiousness, in her opinion, never can
be or ought to be inculcated. To Rahel it is
blasphemy that prayer, the outpouring of the
soul, should be extorted at fixed times and places ;
it seems to her monstrous to make a child adopt
a formula in which many great questions are an-
swered, "which the child would not have proposed
to itself ... a sad spectacle of stifled intelli-
gence!" And she would gladly grant childhood
what she finds to be its peculiar happiness —
not to form any "image of life" but to live in the
present, although she knows that this happy state,
which she calls "the first human nature," cannot
last, that "brooding over things is the nature of
the spirit," or, as she also calls it, "the second
human nature. "

In the course of her own brooding, which we
may call lifelong, she had found "that the whole
difference between people's minds lies only in their
questioning: they must all answer in the same
way"; and that it is of the utmost importance,
above all in the loftiest subjects, not to receive the

1 82 Rahel Varnhagen

answers before the questions, but to try one's
self to find the answers as the questions arise.
And, she thinks, man is capable of this, for his soul
is not obscured by any "fall," a doctrine which
Rahel called an "error insulting to God." With
Spinoza, whose works she knew and loved, she
denied the freedom of the will, and on this point
she uttered the profound saying: "To be free
can only mean to be permitted slavishly to follow
one's inmost nature. "

" Insight is free, but not will. These are confused.
What we must desire is fully determined in us ; it is, so
to speak, ourselves; thereof we are made; our will is
only, as it were, a limb which we can move here or
there. . . .

"Only through a joint-insight (into the divinely-led
course of the world) can we win freedom."

But at the same time she knows that the insight
which liberates us is conditioned by time; that
truth is only the ever-growing insight into the
real nature of things, while "the Truth," which
every nation und sect thinks it possesses, is nothing
but a local truth, which has its own time in which
to develop, live, work, and die. As a characteris-
tic proof of this, Rahel quotes the fact that it
was the titled, ruling, uniformed class that con-

Religion 183

demned Jesus as a heretic, blasphemer, and insti-
gator of revolt, while now the Christians are in
power and condemn the others in the same way.
The older she grew, the more Rahel was filled
with that piety for which she sought expression
above all in the Bible, in Goethe, Angelus Silesius,
Saint- Martin, and other mystical-pantheistic spir-
its, whose thoughts poured "as though out of a
religious sea, " and who were therefore entirely op-
posed to such as construct a definite religion with a
mosaic of dogmas: " My mind is indignant and my
soul revolts at such pretensions," she says. The
religion Rahel had made for herself was a belief
in God which sometimes expressed itself in pas-
sionate supplication and exultation, quite in the
spirit of the Old Testament. To Rahel's feeling
God was unmistakably personal, a God to whom
she cries in her need, on the hem of whose mantle
she rests — an all-sustaining, all-embracing God,
upon whose aid she relies as did David and Isaiah.
But when she thinks, she feels that this personi-
fication of God may be a limitation.

... " Even the general conception of the person-
ality of a primal being appears to me restricted and
arbitrary, but I cannot help it, I find myself always
brought back to this, and I cannot let it be taken from

1 84 Rahel Varnhagen

me ; the universe and the whole spiritual creation ap-
pear to me only as limbs, to which there must be a
head. Without a personal God everything seems to
me mutilated, as it were, deprived of that which alone
gives the rest life, beauty, and meaning."

Nevertheless she kept this personal God — al-
though her faith often passed into pantheistic uni-
versal feeling — as she did her belief in a personal
immortality. On both points she differed from
Goethe, who, in using the word God, did not at-
tach any idea of personality to it, and who was
convinced of immortality, but only for those who
had been able to create it for themselves.

Whether Rahel defined to herself this differ-
ence between her view of life and Goethe's,
appears to me uncertain, and if she did so, it was
altogether immaterial to her. For to her as to
him feeling was everything in these matters, and
she could no more doubt Goethe's piety than his
existence. Rahel's metaphysical needs were cer-
tainly more urgent than his. On this point there
is a saying of Rahel's which is characteristic. She
is speaking of Benjamin Constant, who inspired in
Mme. de Stael the great love of her life. Rahel
fully understood the charm Constant exercised,
and she enjoyed his "enjouement ironique" so

Religion 185

long as it was directed against the incongrui-
ties of existence. But it annoyed her when
it took the form of scepticism towards all the
profound questions of life. Just because he is
right in saying that life is full of contradictions
and confusion, says Rahel, the craving for reason,
goodness, and justice, which is inherent in us, is a
pledge that in some way we shall attain them all.
And she concludes by regretting that Constant's
"ironical humour came from so deep a source, and
that he did not draw still deeper from that source. "
Rahel's religious feeling has an Oriental earnest-
ness; her capacity of Jewess, grown up in an age
of rationalism, made of her a freethinker, it is true,
but one who preserved her reverence for any honest
religious faith; she had herself suffered from the
prejudices against her race and could not fall into
intolerance. If she speaks slightingly of roman-
ticism, it is only because she finds a lack of sin-
cerity and seriousness in this "new Catholicism."
When, as in ^[ovalis, she finds mysticism deep and
great, she loves it. But if, on the one hand, she
understands romanticism through her love of
such minds as Novalis, Lavater, Saint-Martin,
Angelus Silesius, on the other she approaches the
age of enlightenment through her sympathy with

1 86 Rahel Varnhagen

Lessing. And in her foremost teachers, Goethe,
Fichte, Spinoza, she found that union of lucid
thought and deep feeling that she loved above all.
The friend who called her a "philosophical natural-
ist" indicated her standpoint most correctly —
unless it be a contradiction in terms to speak of
the standpoint of a subjectivist thinker, which is
like that of a sailor on a voyage of discovery ! For
subjectivism as regards one's view of life implies
that the soul preserves a listening attitude, both to-
wards the revelations that rise from its own depths,
and those that are borne in upon it from the ex-
terior world. To Rahel everything was reve-
lation, great minds and little children, the perfect
creations of art and the smallest works of nature.
She, who paid her devotions in no church, lived
devoutly at every moment, for, as she herself said,
she found her church everywhere. And if she
gave her faith a more personal expression than did
Goethe, she felt with him that "life is the great
primal essence, from which all flows, with or with-
out our intervention." To her as to him piety
means above all the constant thought that the
conditions of this particular moment are given
us as material to work upon, so that we may
thereby become conscious collaborators with life.

Religion 187

Rahel was a mystic in the sense that it was by
intuition, by feeling, not by abstract reasoning,
that she gained her insight into the depths of life,
of death, and of the human soul, and when she was
faced by the inscrutable or the unknowable, sought
light in solitary contemplation or some other
means that lay within herself.

Rahel, who "begged to be excused a Paradise
with angels, " felt it a necessity of her own nature,
of that of humanity, to hope for "a holy, free, and
inviolable state." And with this hope of "ever
new experiences" she calmed her heart before the
thought of death.

On the loss of dear friends — losses which she calls
her "shedding of leaves," — as during her own re-
peated attacks of illness, her thoughts were centred
with increasing frequency upon "death, which,
next to life, we do not understand. "

Much as she had meditated before on life's
incomprehensibility, in the face of death life be-
came "the great, holy, amusing riddle," and the
possibilities of the new life she divined "in mo-
ments of true perception" became the serious
problem.

Of its solution she writes: "I confine myself
to the marvel of existence in general; if this is

1 88 Rahel Varnhagen

possible, then the incomprehensible will one day
be comprehended. We must become better, we
must be good; that is the problem. "

She writes these wonderful words on death: "Is
it more wonderful than life, that torn-off fragment,
at the end of which it comes? He who helped me
through the dark womb will also bring me out of the
dark earth! I will live; and therefore I must live.
My sense of life, my need of happiness, order, and rea-
son, are to me another pledge of all this: how other-
wise should I have come by them? These are my
God, my innermost recess, where are also my temple
and my religion. If I may die at any moment, then
I am already dead; that is, I continue to live dead.
But I feel my life and not death .... We shall
certainly be young again. We must receive a new,
much-enhanced youth and go on living in it. And we
do already live on in one, an inner one."

But at another time her thoughts of death are more
pantheistic : ' ' But, alas ! we are only a drop of con-
sciousness. And I should wish so much to go back
into the sea, to be nothing at all in particular ! "

Of her state of soul as she was growing old she gives
this beautiful description: "After the conclusion of
our appointed lot we have the same feelings as before
its commencement. A kind of vague, inquisitive,
youthful existence, an existence that belongs to the
sum of being. If then, we have once been compelled
to lose ourselves, it is a beautiful thing to experience
this little bliss, this second childhood, while still upon
earth.

Religion 189

Thus Rahel lived a pious life and died a pious
death without having sought light, either in life or
in death, in any definite religion.

In the midst of manifold and poignant suffer-
ings she preserved her faith in a good and great
meaning in existence, in the divinity of life, and in
its loftier connection.

In a deep sense it is these feelings again, though
in the form of the idea of evolution, that have
founded the "new religion," the approach of
which Rahel divined, thanks to the "chaste, rever-
end solitude of the soul," that was to her the first
condition of genuine piety, as of profound reli-
gious revelation. Fichte may have confirmed
Rahel in her inner conviction that individuality
involves the promise of eternity. He had, she
said, "turned her best heart outward and made it
fruitful. " His doctrine of the ego harmonised with
Rahel' s individualism, and the element of vital
force and personal power in Fichte inspired in her
a deep admiration for her "dear lord and master,"
at whose sudden death she wrote the affecting
letter in which she says that Germany had now
closed one of her eyes and that she trembled for
the other, Goethe.

But she subscribed neither to Fichte's nor to

190 Rahel Varnhagen

any one else's system. For in every one of them
she found that something "living with us, be-
longing to us" had been immured "as a dead,
killed thing." And therefore she knew that her
own opposition to every system was not due to
"the spirit of contradiction" but to self-preser-
vation. She, like Goethe, could never for a mo-
ment doubt the sovereignty of life — changing,
developing life — and any attempt to prescribe,
in any respect, a fixed form for what was con-
stantly changing was to her, as to him, foolishness.

The divine was as near to her as the air, it was
in this that her soul lived and moved and had its
being. Indeed, it has been rightly said of her
that the soul of the world vibrated in her soul
with such strength that her fragile being trembled
with the force of the God it enclosed. But any
attempt to approach God's nature with analysis
and argument "cut into her like sharp knives."

Rahel has expressed the new religious morality
of our time and its only religious conviction in the
profound words she wrote a few days before her
death :

"The more immanent life there is in a convic-
tion, the deeper and richer will be its association; the
more it appeals and corresponds to all our capabilities,

Religion 191

the more difficult it will be to summarise it and set
it forth just like a piece of machinery. But every
system tends to become a machine. There is only
one great and living organised system: the created
world, which is still creating itself."

CHAPTER V

FELLOW-FEELING

IT has already been mentioned that in Rahel, as
in the rest of the young Jewish community, the
battles and victories of Frederick the Great
awakened the sense of solidarity which causes the
various elements of a nation, in spite of their
dissimilarities, to feel as one people. In this re-
spect war has a uniting power, which peace un-
fortunately does not yet possess.

But when Rahel called the Jews of Berlin
"Frederick the Great's Jews, " she was thinking in
the first place of the new spirit of the age, which
Frederick had fostered and which extended its
influence through him — the spirit of free thought
and tolerance. We all had a share in his victories,
in his judgment, says Rahel; "he gave room
for every plant in his land thrown open to the
sun."

And unless the Jews had really been warmed by
192

Fellow-Feeling 193

this sun, neither Rahel nor the rest of the young
Jews would have felt that they were Prussians.

But in Rahel the feeling of patriotism was born
simultaneously with that of cosmopolitanism,
and therefore both were unusually deep for her
time. Like the foremost of the younger genera-
tion in every country, she embraced the ideals
of the French Revolution, and to her these were
personified in their most eminent representative,
Mirabeau, whom she often saw during his visit to
Berlin. He was, she says later, a man, in the
making of whom nature had rejoiced, as he after-
wards rejoiced in nature, which made her rejoice
in him again, and this mutual rejoicing made the
rest of us rejoice in both.

But it was not only in her youth that Rahel put
her faith in the ideas of which Mirabeau was the
foremost champion. In spite of Goethe's dislike,
certainly more opportunist than profound, of the
French Revolution, in spite of the reaction of
romanticism against it, Rahel maintained through
life her democratic ideas and her republicanism.
For her aristocratic individualism was so profound
that it included ideas which outwardly appeared
to exclude each other.

All her life she sympathised with the working

194 Rahel Varnhagen

classes, "because they are the most numerous and
the poorest. " Indeed, their sufferings sometimes
make her wonder whether the refined culture,
which was her highest gratification, might not be
too dearly bought.

" I also considered the whole mass of human culture,
and whether its quintessence, the highest delight of
noble, richly-gifted persons in each other, and every
other bright and lofty element in life, is worth all the
suffering and misery of those whom it has required
for centuries as its manure. Working carmen and
myself suggested this thought to me."

But if she had really been confronted by the
question whether, for instance, she would sacri-
fice the existence of the great minds, if that were
for the moment the condition of the welfare of the
many, she would certainly have answered no.
With prophetic vision she saw the possibility of a
state of things, in which the great and the small
would mutually create fully human conditions of
life for each other. Since her intuition was thus
in advance of the time, she was ready, when St.-
Simonism appeared, to perceive that it aimed at
just this higher state of things, that it was the
logical consequence of the innermost aim of the
French Revolution — the establishment of human

Fellow-Feeling 195

worth and the elevation of the human race. Ra-
hel's view of society included both the idealism
which creates the future, and the realism which
forms the present. Thus, during the Napoleonic
wars she is an ardent patriot, who clearly per-
ceives the immediate problem — that of liberating
Germany from the French domination — and she
finds the warmest expressions for her love of her
afflicted country. But never for a moment does
a spark of national hatred shoot up within her,
and war itself she hates with her strongest ab-
horrence. It is to her "the proof that we are
still living in the midst of the greatest barbarity;
that wound-giving war, insane capture, and de-
fence, may come to our very threshold; that we
are not above the level of savages. " That Varn-
hagen is out among the perils is her personal
sorrow. But this gives way before her deep sym-
pathy with the universal distress, and before her
shame at the terrible events, unworthy of human-
ity, which she is witnessing.

"O dear, beautiful, slighted peace! O God, how
beautiful is peace! As beautiful as youth, innocence,
health, all things which we only appreciate when we
mourn their loss . . . ."

She abhors all manifestations of chauvinism. The

196 Rahel Varnhagen

qualities with which we Germans ought to adorn our-
selves, she says, are "rectitude, moderation, and obedi-
ence to the law." Against the boastful and narrow
forms of nationalism she aims the following words :

" My country shall never make me narrow-minded
The folly that is committed there vexes and
surprises me enough."

"The time will come when national pride will be
looked upon as self-love or other vanity is now, and
war as brawling."

And to the interpretation of history that en-
courages chauvinism she objects that history in
the hands of the unintelligent only does harm,
since every error has its ancestors and will have
descendants ; that the world, light, and nature are
the real history, and that the intellectual develop-
ment of nations is their true history.

Of Rahel it may be said with truth that no
dogma, no patriotism, no love is capable of
corrupting her sense of justice. And she insists
that it ought to be the special task of women
to act as the conscience of their male friends
and prompt them to act for the good of hu-
manity. Otherwise, Rahel thinks, women are
only a heavy ballast in society. Every woman,
says Rahel, ought to be infinitely more soulful,
noble, good, and helpful than the man to whom she

Fellow-Feeling 197

belongs .... That women ought always to be
neutral, so as to relieve impartially the distress of
all, is another of her sayings. That development
always necessitates some form of strife, Rahel
understood quite well, but she foresaw a future in
which strife and victories of minds will be the only
surviving form of the rivalry of nations as of
individuals.

"Science it is that now claims its veni, vidi, vici.
Let the rude battles of the poor nations give way!
Professors should be their victors! "

" The world is no longer so uncivilised as to be fash-
ioned and taught to think by warlike deeds. This
must be done by our best thinkers and poets, the
noblest of the nation."

Far from sharing in the hatred of Napoleon,
Rahel, like Goethe, entertained a great admi-
ration for Napoleon's mighty personality. In
the midst of German Gallophobia she preserved
and gave utterance to her admiration for the great
values of French culture. She herself practised,
and was proud that the Jews showed more of it
than the Christians, that liberal and effective sym-
pathy which does not enquire after nationality
but only after need of help. There was a time that
Rahel called her ' ' festival of benevolence. ' ' Rahel

198 Rahel Varnhagen

was in Prague, when she found herself in a position
to bring order and seriousness into the voluntary
nursing of the wounded. She now employed in
the public service the talent she had hitherto tried
only in private life, that of bringing people to-
gether, since she had the power of drawing out
the best, the uniting elements in human nature.
She is able to write: "God has smiled upon me;
I am of some help." She, who is "insignificant,
of humble birth, and impoverished," now finds her-
self in a position to do good on a large scale; she
has the happiness of seeing severely-wounded
soldiers "suddenly smile with joy" at a word from
her. She comforts the sick, encourages and
admonishes the convalescent. And how she did
it we may guess from these words of hers: "I
often weep; they have mothers as we have, who
would weep themselves to death if they saw them
now. ..." She rejoices at the discovery of her
own talent for organisation and management, and
in her consciousness of it she exclaims: "If only
I had some profession!" The same feeling took
hold of her during her activity in Berlin at the time
of the cholera in 1830. As she then gained insight
into the conditions of the relief of the poor, it be-
came clear to her that women were wanted on the

Fellow-Feeling 199

boards of management, so that cleanliness, clothes,
work, and so on might be obtained for the poor
when in health.

In a word, it was for collective motherliness that
Rahel wished to prepare a place, it was to find an
outlet for her activities in this direction that she
desired "a profession." But with a perfectly
correct perception of what was the only office she,
with her nature, was qualified to fill, she at once
explains that she would like to be — "a princess!"
In other words, to have power to exercise in a
fully personal and grand style the activity she
individually loved, according to the beautiful
words: "Making a business of doing good is
my only amusement, consolation, and source of
strength!"

Rahel's outcry during that Vienna Congress:
"Fie, Christians! And so they are tinkering to-
gether something in a congress again!" is one
among many expressions of her view of the policy
which, at the Restoration, made a system of re-
action on a Christian basis. But Rahel found
fault not only with the diplomacy and war of the
old regime; she regarded even the reforms, which
were looked upon as so important by the liberals,

200 Rah el Varnhagen

as worn out. It was time, she thought, to re-
cognise one's ignorance and to leave off building
society upon no other foundation than fables of
one's own making: "A new discovery must be
made. . . . Man has still imagination to spare
for ideal conditions, and this imagination demands
material, food. ..." She hopes for a great man,
capable of "discovering a lofty view of life of
universal application, a new religious element, so
to speak, which should contain a severer view of
morality, and which should give to all prescribed
actions another direction, a new ambition. "

Nothing more clearly shows Rahel's prophetic
power than the fact that as early as 1820 she was
aware of the inner connection between the future
and higher order of society and a religious re-
newal. She knew also — the first French Revo-
lution had taught her — that the compact "errors,
which it is impossible to get out of people's heads,
finally fall with those heads." She foresaw the
Revolution of July, and she felt that, although
the peoples of Europe were clamouring for liberty,
the question at bottom was one of "equality and
rights. " As to the forms of these Rahel had no
hard-and-fast views.

What Rahel says of herself in general is appli-

Fellow-Feeling 201

cable to her political opinions: "I never have before-
hand any result in sight or in my mind and am always
ready to conceive things in an innocent way."

Against the superstitious political doctrines of the
Romantic School she directs such ideas as these:
<( Every constitution is nothing else than a rule for the
welfare of all in a given case."

" The time is a spirit and creates its own body."
"The spirit of the time is nothing but the generali-
sation of each particular conviction."

With a keenness of vision that was equalled by
few men of her time, Rahel saw that the promises
of constitutions, by which, during the Napoleonic
wars, the governments had tried to calm their
peoples, had "outgrown the promisers as children
outgrow their parents." And suddenly, Rahel
continues, the children confront their parents with
powers and rights which the latter never thought
about at the christening !

What liberalism aimed at in her day, and what
socialism was beginning to demand, appeared to
Rahel as links in the same necessary development.
She saw the madness of a social order which de-
mands, in her own words, that the majority shall
show themselves good Christians and renounce
the good things of this world in favour of the
minority; a social order in which, as she points

202 Rahel Varnhagen

out, industry, inventiveness, and intelligence are
not in themselves sufficient to secure to their pos-
sessors conditions of life worthy of humanity; a
social order the movement of which Rahel truth-
fully calls circular and not progressive.

"All movement must be referred to something hu-
man ; that is, in this case, something universal, some-
thing that concerns all men, otherwise all movement
will finally become pagoda-like, childishly ridi-
culous, meaningless. That, wherein all men cannot
finally share, is not a good thing; that, wherein they
ought not to share, is bad . . . . "

Just as it was a Frenchman, Saint-Martin, who
during the last phase of Rahel's life most inti-
mately harmonised with her religious mysticism,
so was it another Frenchman, Saint-Simon, who
during the same period gave her prophetic vision
its direction in social questions. Saint-Simon
was all tHe more sympathetic to her, in that his
view of life also had the same fundamental tone as
her own. She only feels happy in the new doc-
trine, since she has really been preparing herself
for it all her life.

" It . . . finds in me a fully-living, well-arranged
supply of ideas. I have not suffered alone, but with
all mankind, perhaps in a way that is unique ....

Fellow-Feeling 203

And nothing interests me deeply but that which may
make the earth better for us, the earth itself and our
actions upon it."

Saint-Simonism is to her "the new, grandly-dis-
covered instrument, which at last touches the great,
ancient wound, the history of mankind upon earth . .
It has already brought to light irrefutable truths,
arranged the real questions in order, and answered
many important ones . . . ."

"How to beautify the earth: my old theme. Free-
dom for all human development : the same . . . . "

"I am the most profoundly-convinced Saint-Si-
monist. For my whole faith consists in the conviction
of the progress and perfectibility of the universe, its de-
velopment to ever greater understanding and welfare
in the highest sense ; happiness and making happy."

And Rahel knew that the condition of all was to
"find that unity of life, in which vocation and in-
clination are merged in each other."

Rahel's specific objection to Saint-Simonism
is that it calls itself a new religion. For, she
thinks, it was doubtless religious, but had not the
distinctive marks which belong to the idea of reli-
gion. Nor need it make use of the word religion,
she thinks, for it has the sanctified knowledge — the
knowledge, capable of proof — of the good, the whole-
some, the just, everything that must now be to us
"God's holy countenance. "

Rahel's deep social feeling did not, however,

204 Rahel Varnhagen

lead her astray into the two prejudices that
flourish in our time. First, that of setting duties
towards society before duties towards one's self.
Rahel, like Goethe, like all genuine humanists,
knew that I must be something myself before I
can be anything to the whole community, and
that much inner life is required to become any-
thing. The other prejudice is that of assuming the
existence of all the virtues in the uneducated class,
but in the educated class the contrary state of
things. Rahel chose her friends from all classes,
wherever she found a genuine human element,
but to find this combined with genuine refinement
was her highest joy. "Noblemen I am often
fond of, the nobility never," she says. She
sharply corrects the want of civility a countess
permits herself towards her. But she lets her
faithful maidservant take her meals at her own
table when not well, and when, during Rahel's last
illness, this servant calls her, as usual, "Gnddige
Frau," Rahel exclaims, as though with relief,
"Ah, we Ve done with Gracious Madams now!
Call me Rahel. "

These little incidents were of a piece with the
rest of Rahel's behaviour to her servants. When
some one objected that she was "spoiling" them

Fellow-Feeling 205

by too much friendliness and consideration, she
replied that this was not impossible, but that in
that case she was egoistic enough to prefer to
spoil her servants by such treatment, rather than
by treating them otherwise to spoil herself.

Even in the now burning servant question she
was so much before her time that she found it
"unnatural to be a domestic." And she was
convinced that those mistresses who complain
most of their servants, would, if serving themselves
give occasion for just as many, if not more com-
plaints !

Rahel's social feeling was an unusually deep one
for her time. "To help God in his creatures " was
her delight. But she was not only charitable, she
was just. Therefore she longed for "just, pious,
pure-hearted, true inner equality among men. "
And here it is above all that she joins "Young
Germany." She feels she is living in a "transi-
tion to better conditions, " and she thinks that in
certain cases these conditions would come about of
themselves, if governments did not quite positively
work in opposition to the welfare of the people.

' ' To all nations the heavy, dark, patient earth offered
her fulness ; there was no need of warfare or lying — nor
of proclamations of justification ! "

206 Rahel Varnhagen

The reactionary phase after the Napoleonic
wars did not quench in Rahel the glow of the ideals
of her youth, whereas so many of the men who, like
her, had hailed the French Revolution with fiery
young hearts, had become backsliders from its
ideas. And when those whose minds had once
revolted against the misery of society began to
talk of the will of God or the order of the world or
historical necessity, Rahel cried: "We shall make
it different!"

So long as she could, she relieved the distress
with which she personally came in contact, espe-
cially the distress of poor old people. But she
held aloof from public charity, which she found
too often combined with the spirit of prodigality,
a spirit which she found inconceivable when pov-
erty was always pressing heavily on the majority.
And, moreover, she clearly saw how impotent
charity is on the whole in dealing with a state
of society the foundation of which needs to be
reformed.

From 1807, when Fichte gave his "Addresses
to the German Nation," until his death, Rahel's
social circle took its tone from him. If she after-
wards compared his influence on her with that of
Saint-Simon, she did so presumably from the point

Fellow-Feeling 207

of view that the highest aim of each was the en-
nobling of mankind, although Fichte laid more
stress on the individual, and Saint-Simon more
on the social conditions necessary thereto, and
although these two great minds sought by
different paths to lead men towards this end.

For this end Rahel also lived, directly and in-
directly, every moment of her life. Just as Rahel
united in a great synthesis aristocratic-individ-
ualistic and democratic-social views of society,
so were pessimism and optimism merged together
in her, as in George Eliot, to form that view of life
which the latter called "meliorism." And is
not this the only view of life possible to one who is
capable both of observing and thinking, both of
feeling and dreaming?

Rahel never shared the longing of the romantic-
ists for bygone times. On the contrary, she was
filled with ever-increasing admiration for the
present, "the beloved, honoured present. " And it
is characteristic of her clear sight that she in-
stances the growth of the feeling of solidarity as
the surest proof of the progress of the race; she
points out that Europe is now thrown into a state
of agitation if "injustice is committed in any
corner of it." She indicates the increasingly-

208 Rahel Varnhagen

conscious desire that all should not only be better
but should be able to live better. She instances
the material improvements that have been intro-
duced in her time, and exclaims: "Yes, it is a
pleasure to me to live now, since the world is really,
actually moving, since ideas, happy dreams enter
into life, and since mechanics, industry, inventions,
and associations are realising these dreams."
Knowledge of what ought to be, Rahel thinks,
will finally conquer, even if this knowledge has to
wait "a thousand years for the sunshine that is to
make the plant grow!" She knows that "the
present is also future," and that to possess the
future one does not need to live in it. And her
joyous conviction, "it's moving, the world,"
is no less joyous because she goes on to say that
the world moves too slowly to allow her to be
present at the feast.

Nothing more beautifully illustrates Rahel's
fellow-feeling with mankind than her own words,
written in April, 1831 :

"Now I have thought out an epitaph for my
self. It is to run :

" 'Good people, when anything good befalls man-
kind, in your joy have a kindly thought of mine. ' !

CHAPTER VI

SOCIAL LIFE

THERE is something that we people of the
present day feel the want of in the midst of our
many-sided activity, our feverishly-competitive
work; something that we miss more or less con-
sciously and that we are in the habit of calling
"time to live." One might write a book on this
significant expression; here I only touch upon
complaint from one side — that part of our
existence that is called social life.

We are all agreed that nowadays we have no
social life in the old meaning of the term. We
encounter one another on all sorts of occasions, but
we seldom really meet. We usually go home with-
out having exchanged any ideas that have brought
us nearer to each other's real nature or nearer to
reality in a single respect. Instead of the sense
of intellectual acquisition and agreeable repose

that a private reunion ought to leave behind it,

209

210 Rahel Varnhagen

we take home with us in most cases the impression
of a loss.

Whose fault is this? The men's, say the women.
They are communicative with each other in the
smoking-room and at the club, but have no mind
for the soulful intercourse of former days, at once
refined and confidential, with women. But are
the men really to blame for all the evil in this
world? As regards social life in particular, the
truth is, of course, so well known as to be a
commonplace, that it is woman who shapes social
life and gives it its tone and substance. Is it not
possible that one of the causes of the disparity
between what social life is and what it might
be may be looked for in the modern innovation,
that not only do the men work hard, harder than
formerly, but that many women also work and
thus arrive tired and listless at the gatherings
where formerly they were the living force? Can
the men of our time say that they receive more
from the women than the women from them in the
way of powerful, personal impressions, stimulating
talk, health-giving cheerfulness ? Hardly !

But the modern woman's equality with men in
the matter of the burden of daily work is not the
only cause. There are deeper-lying reasons why

Social Life 211

social life has lost its significance even as re-
freshment— recreation in the literal meaning of the
word — and still more as a means of putting ideas
in circulation and extending the intellectual
horizon. As social life is an expression of life it-
self, of the tendency of development, of the mis-
takes or advances that are taking place, we can
find, by comparing a modern social evening in an
intellectual circle with the pictures we have of
Rahel's gatherings, the chief difference between
the tendency of her time and that of our
own to be this: the highest aim of the former
was culture, that of the latter is tangible
results.

During the latter part of the eighteenth cen-
tury we may say that intellectual interests in
Germany were applied to literature, the theatre,
and other arts, while political life was dead.
A book, an evening at the theatre, an article in
a review were at that time great events.

Goethe's ideal of culture was also that of the
age. And this ideal was the loftiest, for it in-
volved a constant striving to unite organically
the best intellectual values with one's own per-
sonality, and to make of one's self the highest
possible intellectual value.

212 Rahel Varnhagen

In Germany at this time, as in France a gen-
eration earlier, women exercised a great influence
as vehicles of culture. They did not create works of
art, seldom wrote books, did not systematise ideas.
But they assisted the mutual agreement between
different departments of culture and the dissemi-
nation of the various products of culture; they
thus performed in the intellectual world the
same task that insects perform in the world of
plants.

When the men of that time speak of the women
who exercised in Berlin this rich influence on in-
tellectual life, there is always one to whom they
all ascribe not only a mediative function, but an
inspiring one.

As in the flourishing period of Athenian history
we have glimpses of the figure of Aspasia, who,
herself creating nothing, was to Socrates an in-
spiration of wisdom, to Pericles of eloquence,
to Sophocles of poetry, and to Phidias of beauty
of line, so we divine in the background of the
Berlin of Schleiermacher and the Humboldts,
Fichte and Hegel, the Romantic School and Young
Germany, the figure of another woman, Rahel, who
exercised a similar influence.

It would carry us too far to quote even a small

Social Life 213

part of the references to Rahel which confirm
what is here said.

Schleiermacher, her friend of many years, says :
"Rahel presents the rare phenomenon of a human
being who is always concentrated, who can always
command her whole self. " Alexander von Hum-
boldt calls her his "long-proved friend" and lays
stress on the extraordinary circumstance that,
with so much suffering, Rahel had preserved such
cheerfulness and gentleness, that with so much
genius she also possessed so much heart. Wil-
helm von Humboldt, who in her young days found
her "surprisingly sensible and witty," indeed, the
most entertaining person in Berlin, says, after
the publication of her letters, that it could be said
of this book, as of no other, that there was not a
dead letter in it. And he testifies that he had
never met Rahel personally without her giving
him the "suggestion" of a serious reflection or
a living emotion; that her mental development
was her own work and that her intercourse with
notable men had had little influence upon her.
For, on the one hand, she had already worked
out her fundamental views before she came in
contact with them, and, on the other, both her
ideas and their form were original to such a

214 Rahel Varnhagen

degree that it was impossible to attribute them
to any influence from without. "Above all,"
he concludes, "truth was a distinguishing trait
in her intellectual and moral nature." Ranke
speaks of her having the instinct of a Pythia.
Oelsner calls her an "explorer of souls" and at
the same time a glorious child, splashing in
the waves of time, but a child with an instinct
that carries her further than all the "school
and worldly -wisdom " of men. Another found
in one of her sayings "matter for thought for
a whole lifetime. " Gentz compares Rahel's rich,
ever-active, and fertile understanding with the male
element, his own boundless sensibility with the
female; and so, he says, together they produced
"ideas and feelings and sayings, all quite unprece-
dented. " Goethe and Jean Paul, the romanticist
and Young Germany, all agreed in their opinion
that Rahel possessed such depth of thought and
feeling that a flash from her soul "illuminated far
wider expanses than sheets of dissertations. "

Is any better proof required of the uniqueness
of Rahel's personality? For it has only been
given to a few exceptional persons to be held in
estimation by three consecutive and mutually
counteracting periods.

Social Life 215

To Rahel's first salon, formed entirely by the
power of her personality, belonged the three
pairs of brothers, the Schlegels, the Humboldts,
and the Tiecks; Schleiermacher, Fichte, J. von
Muller, Gentz, Fouque, Prince Louis Ferdinand,
and, for a shorter time, Kleist, and several others,
both Germans and foreigners, of more or less
celebrity. Among the foreigners was the Prince
de Ligne, one of the choicest personalities of the
age, a master of the social tone of the ancien re-
gime, the tone that was Rahel's ideal for inter-
course. She found Berlin society "rude"; it
caused her "a real, incessant pain, " but De Ligne's
tone, on the other hand, was "a real green-
sward, a sofa, a gondola for the soul. " But that
was just what Rahel's own social gatherings
became.

The most immediate influence of Rahel's salon
was that her countrymen began to see what a con-
versational tone, light and full of meaning, ought
to be. She. herself found the German language
still somewhat undeveloped as regards "life for
the day, " and she tried to prepare the way for that
" sociableness in words" which she hoped the Ger-
mans would one day attain. The sociableness
which Rahel characterises as "a conscious, agree-

216 Rahel Varnhagen

able co-operation for the enjoyment and repro-
duction of all that humanity has produced,"
that is what she calls with reason "half her
life," while empty sociableness was her horror.

She did not foresee, however, that a time was
approaching with such a passion for individual
interests that nothing was left over for the interest
in each other that gave the salons their ethical
importance; none of that calm that gives an
aesthetic perfection to speaking and listening. No
doubt Rahel's time, that of the great Revolution,
of Napoleon, of the Revolution of July, was even
more agitated; no doubt the spirit of the age was
already transformed by Napoleon's spirit, and the
unlovely fight for power was soon to take the
place of the beautiful effort for culture. But as
yet the only effect of all this was to make life feel
richer and fuller of possibilities. And a Rahel
might hope that the social culture she was creating
was the glow of sunrise, not, as it proved to be, of
sunset.

Rahel is a living refutation of the oft-repeated
delusion that really good tone, the genuine art
of society, consists in levelling individuality to a
certain uniformity. Rahel, on the contrary, could

Social Life 217

say that "every least word of hers was connected
with her personality." And it is very characteris-
tic of Rahel that she explains her popularity at a
watering-place as due simply to her being "true
and having independent views; this extends even
to my gestures. I am the only person here who
has any opinion." She ventured to contradict
all without hurting any one, since they all felt
that the matter was what was important to Rahel,
not the impression she was producing, not any
pride in being right. And although of course Ra-
hel did not give others credit for the same rich
originality as that from which her own keen-eyed
observations, witty conceits, and profound words
of wisdom proceeded, she yet recognised that all
might be entertaining, if only they would be as
frank and independent as herself. She could
say with truth that, when she met the loftiest
minds on their stars, she had come there by her
own way.

Rahel' s conversation was of another kind than
that of the Frenchwomen whose salons have be-
come celebrated. With one of these, Mme. de
Stael, Rahel came in contact personally, and her
judgment of Mme. de Stael is extremely character-
istic of herself.

2i 8 Rahel Varnhagen

" Understanding she has in plenty, but no listening
soul; it is never calm within her, never as if she were
reflecting in solitude, always as if she had already told
many people of it .... It never becomes music ;
nor does she keep to any theme . . . . "

And Rahel complains that, with all her gifts,
Mme. de Stael has no " calm, innocent sphere of the
soul."

It was just such a sphere of the soul that sur-
rounded Rahel and that made the circle to which
she gave her stamp differ both from the society of
the French age of enlightenment and from that of
the German age of hero-worship. There was a
great silence behind Rahel's words:

" There is a play of colour in our breast, so delicate
that, as soon as we try to express it, it becomes a
lie . . . . This shyness restrains me from speaking.
A feeling is beautiful, so long as it has not become
history ; it is the same with life itself. "

And from this it follows that, genuine as she
was in social intercourse, she yet gave her best
in conversation with a single person. She felt
that "one is never really in a person's company
except when one is alone with him, " and she
understood how, in the midst of a social gather-

Social Life 219

ing, to find an opportunity for such exclusive
meetings.

Apart from social life she could do so even
more often. Bettina speaks of their lonely
evening hours, when Rahel in a few minutes
could impart so much, through that "intercourse
in the spirit" which was peculiar to her. Bet-
tina also insists that the most beautiful feature
of Rahel' s soul was her "penetration of the
individual." Thereby Rahel became so "per-
fectly kind," so forbearing where others con-
demned. ... "To be just is a divine art,"
Bettina concludes, after having thus thrown
light upon Rahel's character in one of her happy
expressions: "Rahel could still taste the salti-
ness in what others had thrown away as
the ashes of a burnt-up life." Rahel on her
side enjoyed these conversations with Bettina,
in which they were like "two beings soar-
ing over the earth," and said profound things
to each other "about human beings, not about
people."

While other celebrated conversationalists, like
Mme. de Stael herself, preferred to lead up to sub-
jects in which they themselves could shine most,
Rahel was eager to avoid those in which her hon-

220 Rahel Varnhagen

esty would have compelled her to use a frankness
unpleasant to some people.

Rahel said : " I spare my friends my censure. You,
when necessary, I certainly shall not spare. My
freedom of thought, my pride, my contempt for all
fettering opinions are only for the wisest and most
intimate among you; but to every mixed company
that comes to my house I am bound to offer friend-
liness and agreeableness — like tea and ices. This is no
question of virtues, but of becoming forms of inter-
course. . . . Without these there is no wit, no
frankness, no merry letting-one's-self-go."

G. von Brinckman, from whose description of Ra-
fael's social art the last and several of the following
quotations are taken, concludes thus:

"Only thus did she, the unpretending bourgeoise
girl, without brilliant connections, without the uni-
versal passport of beauty, and without any con-
siderable fortune, succeed in gradually collecting
about her a numerous social circle, which was be-
yond comparison the most delightful and gifted in the
whole of Berlin. A circle, to be admitted to which
royal princes, foreign diplomatists, artists, scholars,
and business men of the first rank, countesses and
actresses were all equally eager, and where each was
worth no more, but at the same time no less, than
the impression he himself produced by his cultured
personality."

Rahel laid great stress on human intercourse as

Social Life 221

a person's best means of culture, even surpassing
books. "Men belong together," she said, "in
order to use their reason, to love, and to exercise
justice!" No doubt in the last case Rahel herself
was determined by her personal sympathies — who
is not? But she possessed the most important
qualification for justice, in that she granted to
every one "each and every quality" and that she
had affection for "all that feels or seems to feel. "
Above all she had the art which she calls "a diffi-
cult, nay, an unlearnable one: quickness of sight!"
She congratulates herself on her "sure eyes,"
which went right through accidentals to the es-
sential. She admits, however, that she was far too
credulous: people had only "to weep and wish" to
make her believe them capable of the nobility they
desired! But otherwise Rahel has proved her
right to the praise she gives herself: of being "an
expert in the knowledge of the heart and of
human nature. " If she found herself deceived, if
her feeling had ^subsided, she did not conceal it.
She did not expect of herself that everything should
be everlasting. But she was not one of those who
"have no memory in the heart"; on the contrary,
she was a faithful nature and possessed, as she said
herself, "a terrible supply of heart and life. " She

222 Rahel Varnhagen

was thus able to include in her sympathies the
most widely different persons and destinies. To-
wards her real friends she was what she called
herself in another connection, a Don Quixote.
She is a confirmation of E. B. Browning's saying:
That knights errant are more common among wo-
men than among men, and that Cervantes, if he
had been a Shakespeare as well, would probably
have made his Don a Dona.

These are characteristic sayings of Rahel's: "I
cannot resist the current within me. What I appre-
hend, I embrace in the whole extent it has for me, and
in my whole depth, immediately, very rapidly. Thus
it is always with me, that is why I have so soon
finished with mediocre things and, on the other
hand, never with better things."

"In my breast men press and die as on a battlefield,
none of them knows of the others, each must die for
himself. ... As I will not have peace, and as
there are men like the sands of the sea in number, I
must bear all, as the earth does."

Rahel's receptions began at five o'clock, or even
earlier. No one was specially invited, but all felt
that they were welcome, when the hostess met
them with quiet, simple cordiality. Any one who
tried to account to himself for the strong impres-

Social Life 223

sion she at once produced, soon found that it did
not depend upon beauty but upon harmony. She
was small, with an unusually good figure, deli-
cately built and full, with a quiet grace in all her
movements. Her dress, always simple, tasteful,
and individual, was in agreement with her whole
appearance. She had clear eyes, which looked
straight before them and "were observant and
communicative at the same time"; her delicate
features beamed with intelligence and would have
shone with courage, if sorrow had not cast its
shadow over them. A smile, generally melancholy,
sometimes roguish, played lightly over the fine
mouth, and her voice sounded as sincere and
melodious as her smile would have led one to
expect.

Her drawing-room was filled by degrees with the
most eminent men Berlin could show in the liter-
ary, scientific, and artistic world, and with women
remarkable for beauty and charm. But Rahel
would seldom have more than two such women on
the same evening, for she knew that a greater num-
ber of ladies always disturbed the connection and
productiveness of the conversation. Rahel, how-
ever, made no speeches and, indeed, did not speak
for long at a time; her form of communication

224 Rahel Varnhagen

was like the lightning. She only dominated the
company indirectly and never tried to make her-
self its centre. She brought together those who
might have something to say to each other; she
listened in the grateful and alert way that is the
first art of a hostess; she was often silent, when she
had induced others to talk; she united the threads
of conversation and sought out points of contact
between all the persons of different nationality,
age, and opinions who surrounded her.1 And of
these some were old friends, some new acquaint-
ances introduced by those friends, or celebrat-
ed foreigners. "All parties get on with me,"
she said; "they regard me as a question, as indeed
I am; and sometimes as an honest and courageous
answer." She tried to find room for every legi-
timate claim; her kindness sought out those who
were overlooked and placed them where they
could make themselves felt. She did not even
neglect her own insignificant relatives, but tried

1 " Every one was busy in a natural way and yet no one was
obtrusive, they seemed just as glad to listen as to speak ....
With what freedom and grace she [Rahel] knew how to ani-
mate, brighten, and warm those about her. It was impossible
to withstand her gaiety. . . . Her sallies were wonderfully
unexpected. ... I have heard magnificent sayings of hers,
true inspirations, often in a few words, which flashed through the
air like lightning and reached the inmost heart." (Brinckmann.)

Social Life 225

to bring them into the conversation, so that they
might not feel that they were outside the circle.
She seldom failed to catch "a look, a pulse-beat
of genuine humanity," and with the highest and
lowest alike she had only one manner, that of
kindness. While according recognition to every
one, she maintained her own standpoint with
gentle but inflexible energy. In the atmosphere
of truth that surrounded Rahel, the others became
sincere; she sought so perseveringly and faithfully
for every one's real ego that she ended by rinding
it; she communicated so spontaneously the dis-
coveries of her own soul, the experiences of her own
heart, that every one else produced his essential
qualities and became more soulful, purer, and
gentler than at other times. In all this there ap-
pears no preconceived design, no arrangement. She
has no personal vanity to satisfy, no r61e to sustain,
no rivalry to defeat. She never took people on
their petty sides; was never fussy with them; did
not call upon them to be amiable or to show them-
selves off; she simply by her own presence created
a warm climate in which they all unfolded them-
selves. It was one of Rahel's articles of faith
that to see through people's masks was to do them
a good deed, and this good deed she did to all.

226 Rahel Varnhagen

No one posed in her presence; "I kill pedantry
within a radius of thirty miles, I am such a poison-
tree for it, " she said. Nor did any one lay down
the law. Her own unconstrained naturalness
communicated itself to her circle ; they talked sim-
ply of the highest questions, passionately of what
agitated them, and gaily of what amused them.
Rahel called herself "savage" in the sense that
she hated all empty forms and was herself so free
from constraint that any one could speak to her
about anything. If a complication arose, she
solved the difficulty with her shrewd judgment;
she removed subjects of dispute when she feared
their discussion would become too heated; if a
serious tone prevailed too long she led the subject
to a new point of view, and her tact restored
jesting to its proper limits, if it had overstepped
them. Moderation and mobility, repose and
variety, self-command and freedom marked the
society that Rahel led. During pauses in the
conversation there was music on the piano, which
was left open all the evening; Rahel herself was an
accomplished pianist, besides being a passionate
lover of music. Simple refreshments were served
and the company broke up about nine o'clock,
while all impressions were still strong and no

Social Life 227

weariness had made the spirit of the party flag.
It might happen that one or another, Prince
Louis Ferdinand, for instance, stayed on to im-
provise on the piano, for which he showed a happy
gift, or to talk more intimately than had been
possible in the larger circle. But as a rule the
evening closed as all such evenings should, at its
climax. Every one felt he had enjoyed what
Rahel considered social life ought to be: "A con-
densation of and a point of departure for every-
thing moral. " They took with them the memory
of a varied exchange of ideas, of a deep, but not
pedantic interest in art, literature, and science, of
real discussion of important questions of the day,
of well-weighed judgments, of fertilising, not
negative criticism. And the men in particular,
however different they might be amongst them-
selves, from a Schleiermacher to a Prince Louis Fer-
dinand, "Prussia's Alcibiades, " all felt that they
had seen a revelation of a genuine womanly nature,
or in other words of that which to them was the
poetry of life. That is what men long for, what
men seek. And when they do not find this direct-
ness and freshness at home, nor yet in society of
"good tone, " then they look for it in that of bad
tone. Natural women, who had a strong and rich

228 Rahel Varnhagen

nature to reveal, were always the best inspiration
of great poets, and no literature was ever fresh
and beautiful during periods when women were
not natural, not direct, not themselves.

There we have the final reason of the decline of
our social life. That women have acquired a
more independent outward position does not
necessarily mean that they are more themselves,
richer personalities. Collectively, feminine in-
dividuality has developed in our century owing to
new fields of work, wider opportunities for edu-
cation, and other things, but these new means
of development themselves easily induce a certain
uniformity therein. They must all occupy them-
selves with the same tasks, the same social inter-
ests, and the same works of public charity, so that
even those who are not overworked in making their
living are made listless and preoccupied, and thus
the effect upon home and social life is the same.
While in our time unusual feminine qualities more
easily obtain recognition, there is probably less
originality among the majority to-day than fifty
years ago, because a certain average level of cul-
ture is possessed by all, produced by the same
school system, and afterwards maintained by the

Social Life 229

same books, plays, and criticisms; no one wants
to be uncultivated by deviating from what she
believes to be the opinion of the majority; thus
we find that every one has exactly the same ideas
and opinions and expresses them in exactly the
same language ! No one will purchase her freedom
of thought and action, her right to be natural, at
the price of being called pretentious, affected, or
narrowly egoistic, as is the usual consequence of
dissociating one's self from one's circle, whether in
opinions or manners or habits of life. A woman
therefore arranges her house, her habits, and her
dress according to the taste of the day; she man-
ages her sympathy and her charity, her social feel-
ing and her admiration collectively; the personal
element is ever less, while the public contribution
of woman's work is ever becoming greater.

This uniformity in women's thought, feeling, and
action is not, however, an expression of the sense of
social duty and responsibility. Woman is still too
apt to feel as an individual where a sense of soli-
darity is required, and collectively where she ought
to be individual. The community, the home, and
social life all suffer from this confusion of ideas.
Until women are penetrated by the two qualities
which Rahel profoundly calls the source of all

230 Rahel Varnhagen

other virtues, "justice for others, courage for our-
selves," neither the life of the community, of the
home, nor of sociality will approach the fulness of
meaning which they might attain.

It might be objected that Rahel was not only
exceptionally gifted but enjoyed an exceptional
position. She possessed, for instance, a small
fortune, which gave her time to devote herself
personally and by correspondence to social life
and her own culture. If she had been bound
by work, she could not have been the same. Both
as an unmarried and as a married woman she
occupied a position in society which did not in-
volve any burden of appearances to be kept up,
but gave her the opportunity of forming what-
ever connections she pleased; and, having grown
up during the period of the Revolution, she had
already freed herself from a number of preju-
dices. It was also of importance that she had no
inclination towards public production to claim
her mental powers; that her husband shared all
her interests, while nevertheless their life together
was not of that all-absorbing kind that isolates a
couple from the outside world, and finally that she
was not tied by motherhood. She thus possessed
in an unusual degree the opportunity of imparting

Social Life 231

intellectual benefits within a considerable circle.
But that she did this depended in the first place
on the fact that she was, after the death of Mme.
de Stael and before the appearance of George Sand,
what Brinckmann calls her, "the most remarkable
woman of her time, " its most distinguished
feminine personality both by her gifts and by her
originality. Rahel's most comprehensive signi-
ficance lay in augmenting the productiveness,
humanity, and culture of her time by herself every-
where seeking and teaching others to seek the
truth; by everywhere encouraging them to mani-
fest their own culture; by imparting to others
her profound way of looking at religion, men and
women, literature and art; by judging everything
according to its intrinsic value, not according to
its deficiencies ; by everywhere understanding, be-
cause she loved, and giving life, because she believed
in liberty.

But this, which Rahel accomplished on a grand
scale in the social and public life of her time,
could be promoted in some degree by every wo-
man, each in her own circle, if she would learn to
understand what was the secret of Rahel's power,
what the age is unconsciously or consciously thirst-
ing for, what is indispensable to the health of art

232 Rahel Varnhagen

as well as of life — a full development and a
courageous communication of one's personality.

It was for about ten years that Rahel's first
salon exercised its great influence. The disasters
of 1806 scattered some of its members and gave
those who were left new occupations and anxie-
ties. During the years when Rahel and Varnhagen
were constantly on the move, Rahel certainly made
her ennobling influence felt in every circle to which
she belonged, but to none could she give her tone
until she was once more able to open her salon in
her own home in Berlin.

And then it was proved again what a "human
magnet" Rahel was; her second salon was "the
garret, but on an enlarged scale. " And as Varn-
hagen also collected people about him, Rahel, who
on her return found herself "surrounded only
by graves," was soon once more in the centre
of a circle intellectually alive, in which some of
the old friends and many new ones afforded her the
joy of genuine human intercourse. Through the
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy family she came in close
connection with the musical world. Rahel, who
during a severe illness at Prague had been re-
freshed by Weber's playing in the room next to

Social Life 233

hers, and to whom Beethoven, without being
asked, had played a whole evening, became every
year more eager for music. Her own musical
education had consisted of Bach and Handel, and
all her life she was most deeply affected by these
two masters. She compared Bach with Kant, by
whom she was otherwise quite uninfluenced, and
calls Bach "the metaphysical, God-fearing, gifted
with the highest sagacity," while Handel brought
her "into the realm of the higher melancholy, into
an anticipation of bliss. " In Mozart she saw a
"divine being"; for Spontini, whom she person-
ally knew, she had a high respect. But Weber's
operas displeased her on account of the then
fashionable "Teutonism, " which in them found
one of its many expressions, disagreeable to Rahel.
She was enthusiastic about Paganini, and on the
whole nothing of importance in the musical world
escaped her.

It was, however, not only the music, but the
whole spirit of the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy house
that she loved, for "it is all truth there." She
often sees Amalia von Helwig, as they live near one
another, and Rahel bestows on her her highest
word of praise; she is "real." Besides these,
some of the most notable visitors of the Varn-

234 Rahel Varnhagen

hagens' salon are Schleiermacher, Alexander von
Humboldt, Hegel, Cans, Ranke, Chamisso, Fou-
que, Achim von Arnim, Bettina, Henrik Stef-
fens, Heine, and Piickler-Muskau. With Uhland,
Riickert, and others Rahel had come in contact
during her years of travel. For the rest, Rahel
always blends Bohemia with the aristocracy. It
was her joy to be able to say with truth: "All
classes, all kinds of people talk to me. " And as all
kinds of people collected about the Varnhagen
couple, their drawing-room became a power that
spread culture and distributed intellectual values
far beyond the limits of Berlin. This power of
giving the tone and fixing the value explains the
ill-natured words about Rahel which escape cer-
tain authors, Immermann, for example, who were
strangers to her circle. The impression Rahel pro-
duced at this period upon every one who personally
came near her, is vividly shown in some remarks
of Grillparzer's.

"Varnhagen went home with me. As we passed his
house, it occurred to him to introduce me to his wife,
the afterwards so celebrated Rahel, of whom I then
knew nothing. I had been strolling about all day
and felt tired to death, and was therefore heartily glad
when we were told at the door that Frau Varnhagen

Social Life 235

was not at home. But as we came down the stairs, she
met us, and I submitted to my fate. But now the
lady, — elderly, perhaps never handsome, shrivelled by
illness, reminding one rather of a fairy, not to say a
witch, — began to talk, and I was altogether enchanted.
My weariness disappeared, or perhaps, rather, gave
way to intoxication. She talked and talked till
nearly midnight, and I don't know whether they
turned me out or whether I went away of my own
accord. Never in my life have I heard any one talk
more interestingly or better. Unfortunately it was
towards the end of my stay, and I was not able to
repeat the visit. "

Grillparzer left other similar observations about
Rahel, in one of which, for instance, he says that
she was the only woman to whom he would have
wished to be married.

Heine calls Rahel "the most inspired woman
in the universe"; he describes his acquaintance
with her as the beginning of a new epoch in his
life, her home as his fatherland, and herself as his
"patron saint." He even declares that he ought
to wear a dog-collar inscribed: I belong to Frau
Varnhagen! When absent from her he had only to
pronounce her name to be "cheerful and in a
pleasant mood. " Heine also characterises Rahel' s
style admirably, when he compares her with
Borne — whom Rahel also came to know and appre-

236 Rahel Varnhagen

ciate — and calls them "the Bacchantes of thought,
reeling in holy intoxication after the god. "

In general, nearly all the authors of "Young
Germany" declare that they received more stimu-
lation and impulse from Rahel than from any other
woman. It is after Varnhagen's publication of her
letters — that is, after Rand's death — that this influ-
ence becomes so powerful. For during her lifetime
she had had little or no contact with any of them,
except Heine. Laube, who, however, was among
her acquaintances, calls her letters the most open-
hearted book in German literature and herself
"Rahel the truthful." T. Mundt finds in these
letters "a movement of elemental force and a
development of original personality," and calls
Rahel "the sympathetic nerve of the time"; in her
"infinitely emotional personality" are combined
"the anxious pangs of a period of transition"
with "prophetic insight into the future." Gutz-
kow admired in Rahel, amongst others things,
and as a contrast to the usual feminine culture,
her "higher receptivity." Gustav Kuhne not only
gave an admirable characterisation of Rahel, but
also a rapid picture of her outward appearance dur-
ing the later years of her life. From the former
this telling judgment may be quoted: that Rahel

Social Life 237

constituted in her own person "the emancipation
of the thinking woman, " since she revealed what
woman can achieve as a thinking being through
"solitary detachment and superior intellectual
force, " but that this thinker- woman owned at the
same time the most womanly soul, a soul full of
sympathetic tenderness, through which she was
before all things, always and everywhere a "com-
forter of the heart. "

Kuhne retained a striking impression of the only
occasion on which he saw Rahel, the figure clad
in black, the pale face, the small, white hands
clasped together; but above all her "dark, deep
eyes" remained in his memory. For a long time
it seemed to him that these eyes followed him,
with their manly, intrepid light ; he felt that there
was not only a searching, but a "dissolving power
in the persistent gaze of her meditative eyes."1
Even in 1830 a stranger, who saw Rahel for the
first time, lays ^stress on the wonderful freshness
of her clear, delicate countenance, and on the firm,
easy bearing which her short and, at that time,
somewhat stout figure maintained. Such was

1 Kleist too seems to have felt the power of Rahel's look, as he
says that her words were as expressive as her eyes.

238 Rahel Varnhagen

the external impression Rahel communicated in
her later years to those who gathered round her,
still charmed by what Varnhagen calls her "talent
for life, " by which she "gave beauty and harmony
both to social life and to solitude. "

The stranger in question has described a social
evening at the Varnhagens' in March, 1830. He
tells us how, as the first arrival, he witnessed
Rahel's motherly care for her little Elise, and after-
wards saw her attend to the comfort of a pair of
aged guests with the same solicitude. The con-
versation first touched upon a question of religious
orthodoxy and then passed to music, one of the
foreign visitors taking up the cudgels on behalf of
Rossini ; a celebrated singer went to the piano and
gave songs by Schubert and Beethoven, to which
Rahel listened with tears in her eyes and a happy
smile. When the music ceased, some one men-
tioned a political piece of news, and as politics were
just then a burning topic, a lively debate ensued,
in which Rahel interjected a few remarks. Thus
she succeeded in preventing the dispute from
becoming heated; she purified the air with "rapid
flashes of light humour," which always occa-
sioned a little "shock of surprise and pleasure,"
whereby the uncomfortable feeling was relieved.

Social Life 239

The conversation then turned upon Henriette
Sonntag, who had recently returned to Berlin,
and her musical coquetry was attacked. But
Rahel defended her as an expression of the time.
Henriette Sonntag was a product of the pre-
vailing conditions, from which greatness and lofti-
ness had disappeared, while "moderation and
agreeableness " had come in their place. It was
E. Cans that Rahel was addressing, and he was so
struck by the truth of Rahel's idea that he asked
leave to work it out in a musical review, which
with Rahel's permission, he afterwards did. Then
Alexander von Humboldt arrived from the Court
and soon every one was listening to him, as he
described the different kinds of piety he had
observed in the course of his travels and classified
them according to their types, as a botanist classi-
fies his plants. On his departure the conversation
reverted to French politics, and among other
observations Rahel uttered the far-seeing words,
that the republic jis in the blood of every French-
man and that France would be a republic sooner
or later. To the French people, "my ancestral
people" Rahel called them, a republic is inevi-
table; if they should fail now, they will make one
attempt after another till they succeed. For

240 Rahel Varnhagen

every Frenchman has in him a certain self-glory
and will submit to an abstraction rather than to a
person.

While Rahel was talking in this spirit the visitor
noticed how she, who had at first "appeared so
gentle and modest," became profoundly serious,
her eyes firm, her expression almost defiantly
convinced of the truth of her prophecy, which
concluded thus : that, even if interludes were possi-
ble, the great events of the time would nevertheless
advance over these fortuitous circumstances,
"making them into the dust of its way." These
last words, characteristic of Rafael's way of ex-
pressing herself, were spoken so earnestly that the
spirit of them took hold of everyone, though the
majority doubted the fulfilment of the prophecy.
Then Bettina von Arnim arrived, and into "her
impetuous flood of wit and thought" Rahel only
interjected a few rapid observations and soon was
content to listen, charmed like the rest, to this
winged, fascinating, inspired art of talking, which
was the final impression of the evening.

Even in my short summary this description
may give a living picture of what those who had
spent an evening at Rafael's carried away with
them, and of Rafael's own power of setting ideas

Social Life 241

in motion, of enlarging points of view or ex-
tending the horizon.

It is very significant that Rahel, who sees in
Wilhelm von Humboldt a desire to transform
everything about him into "the property of his
understanding" and "to leave as little as possible
on earth with which he had not come in contact, "
should complain that this desire was not combined
with a more profound relation to the matter at
issue. He would defend to-day what he attacked
to-morrow, he strewed sophisms and paradoxes
around him during discussions in which he was
interested not in the question itself but in the fire
of words and conflict. Rahel thought less of the
brilliant "intellectual freedom" with which he
accomplished this, when she found that he did
not use this freedom in the cause of intellectual
liberation. As these features, which thus cooled
Rahel towards Wilhelm von Humboldt, were
just the ones that most commonly marked the
Jewish intelligence, it is noteworthy that Rahel
so clearly perceived the thinness of such talents,
which she well characterised in the following re-
mark on orie of Humboldt's political pamphlets:
"The soup is excellent, but it does not give us any
joint. "

16

242 Rahel Varnhagen

Other women, both before and after Rahel,
have exercised a social influence of the same ten-
dency as hers. I was not fortunate enough to know
Malwida von Meysenburg before that late period
of her life when she could see only a few visitors
at a time. But in spite of this I received an im-
pression of what she must have been to the select
cosmopolitan circle that gathered in her drawing-
room in Rome.

Personally I never saw George Eliot. But
Sonia Kovalevsky described her receptions to me
as intellectual solemnities, in which the hostess
herself, by the quiet gentleness of her presence,
her voice, and her smile, made the atmosphere
warm and peaceful, even during lively exchanges
of opinion. George Eliot herself preferred to listen,
and it was only some profound subject that induced
her to take a more active part in the conversa-
tion. Sonia Kovalevsky herself was a brilliant
conversationalist, but had no talent for hold-
ing a circle together. Many other names of wo-
men, more or less eminent, might be mentioned in
this connection, especially of French women.
But on the whole it seems incontestable that in
Rahel the influence of the European woman in
and through social life reached a height it has not

Social Life 243

attained since. Those women who have since
formed famous salons have either had a name of
their own in literature or art, or have acquired
an influential position through a husband in the
political or aristocratic or intellectual world. But
no one has attained this position, as Rahel did,
exclusively by the power of her own personality,
nor exercised it exclusively through her gift of
intercourse in the finest and greatest meaning of
the term.

In this relation some acute opinions of Rahel
were expressed by a Frenchman, the Count de
Custine, who met Rahel at Frankfort a few years
after her marriage. He says that he was "irre-
vocably captivated, without being in love," a
condition which he calls "the most perfect of all
relations between human beings. " To arrive at it,
he thinks, is a difficult problem, but Rahel solved
it by her frankness, her truth, and the magic of
her mind. She gave life, Custine says, "to a
large circle as .well as to a lHe-a-tele\ her gift was
genius in the service of society and sociality."
Rahel, he continues, never found it beneath her
dignity to occupy herself with everyday concerns,
while at the same time none of life's important
affairs lay beyond her vision. Whatever she took

244 Rahel Varnhagen

up, she did thoroughly; she never tried to play a
part, never calculated an effect, nor required to do
so. For her delicate sense of tact always guided
her aright in social life, as did her sense of beauty
in nature and art. Rahel would only have friends.
She did not talk to excite admiration but to reveal
her inner nature, and this was so rich that she had
no need of external activity. Life itself was to her
a continual work. She lived and talked with her
books as with living creatures. She put soul into
everything, and in her world everything had its
use; she had "the mind of a philosopher and the
heart of an apostle, " and this in spite of her being
"child and woman, as much as any one can be."
"She felt as an artist," and she "reached the
highest truths by the two paths which usually
exclude each other: by feeling and reflection, by
divinatory examination, by intuitive insight. "

Rahel's significance as a force of culture may
be best summed up in Custine's words: "In a
more highly organised society Rahel would have
been to the nations what she was here to a little
circle of intimate friends: a light to their minds,
a leader of souls."

Unfortunately our time has not yet arrived at
this higher organisation; on the contrary, it is

Social Life 245

probable that Rahel is now less appreciated than
by her own age. For, while culture was the
highest aim of that time, we have now almost lost
the idea of what culture meant to the mind of a
Goethe or a Rahel.

CHAPTER VII

GOETHE

EVERYONE knows that, as is always the
case with what is great and new, his contem-
poraries were slow to appreciate Goethe. That
he was not understood by the great public, who
put Kotzebue far above him as a dramatist, is
not surprising. But that a Lessing, for instance,
could say of Goethe that he really attracted
attention by the mad things in his Werther, and
that if Goethe became sane there would not be
much left of him, is significant, as is the fact that
the first collection of his works sold so badly
that he had to look for another publisher for the
second. That Moses Mendelssohn understood
Goethe as little as did Lessing, that Klopstock
remained cool, that all the old school was hostile
to him, and that it was only the Romantic School
that began to speak of him as a prince of poets —
all this must be remembered. For otherwise we

246

Goethe 247

shall not realise what intellectual independence
is implied at the close of the eighteenth century
by a young woman like Rahel drawing a bright
halo about Goethe's name simply by the way she
pronounced it: like something which ought not
to be mentioned on the same day as anything
else !

That kind of literary historians, to whom the
spirit of the thing is a hidden mystery, are always
hunting for dates. To them it would be an im-
portant matter to find out, for instance, who it
was that first induced Rahel to read Goethe ( !) —
as though people could not find the sun for them-
selves— or to establish whether it was Rahel or
some other woman of literary influence who first
directed attention to Goethe's significance, and
so on.

Just because Rahel had such a deep reverence
for Goethe it may be assumed that it was not she
among the influential ladies of Berlin who first
began to talk ..about him, to read his works aloud,
and to clothe herself in admiration for him.

Thus, for example, Rahel tells how she remained
dumb even with a genuine admirer of Goethe like
Bettina; how when once in the autumn sunlight at
Montbijou Bettina talked "beautifully and ardently"

248 Rahel Varnhagen

about Goethe, "I behaved as if I did not know him
at all. So it was often with me."

That Rahel, like other live young people of
her time, herself discovered Goethe, lived in him
and on him, and gave him all her soul, before any
one asked for Rahel' s opinion, clearly appears
from her own statements.

She says of her garret in her father's house (the
italics are mine in the first three instances): "There
is my mausoleum. There I have lived, loved, suffered,
rebelled, learned to know Goethe. Grew up with him,
idolised him boundlessly! There I lay awake and
suffered through many, many nights, and looked at the
heavens, the stars, and the world with a kind of hope ;
or at least with violent desires. I was innocent." . . .

"A new volume of Goethe was a festival with me; a
lovely, glorious, beloved, honoured guest, who opened
new gates for me to a new, unknown, bright life.
Throughout my life the poet has accompanied me
unfailingly.

"I went into partnership with his wealth; he was
always my only, surest friend, my safeguard against
being terrified by spectres, my superior master, my
most moving friend, of whom I knew what hells he had
known! — in short, with him I grew up, and after a
thousand separations I have always found him again.
And, as I am no poet, I can never say what he has been
tome." . . .

"When I think of him, tears come into my eyes:

Goethe 249

every one else I love with my strength alone; he has
taught me to love with his. And I do not know how
much I have yet to love. How often have I thought
already: your nature cannot endure more; and then
my nature changed. My poet!11

Thus Rahel lived in Goethe long before she
began to talk about him. But when she did so,
as in her first salon, she had words of admiration,
as one of her hearers tells us, which surpassed all
he had heard up to that time.

And that is the important point, not whether
it was Rahel, as Varnhagen thinks, or the
Schlegels, who began to spread the cult of
Goethe — not who first called Goethe "lord and
master, " but who felt most deeply that he was so.
And the most important point of all is that Rahel's
enthusiasm was kindled through her own profound
understanding of Goethe; that, independently
of all currents of fashion for or against him, he
remained the centre of her intellectual existence;
that her feeling .for him was a complete confirma-
tion of her own words: "No enthusiasm must
blow from without, it must blaze up from the holy
altar of our own spirit."

Thus Rahel taught her contemporaries to live
in the spirit on and through Goethe ; taught them

250 Rahel Varnhagen

that he was inexhaustible as nature herself; that
"from other great minds we receive truths, but
from him the truth."

In a word, Rahel perceived, as none of her
contemporaries, Goethe's right place in the
history of the development of the human mind,
and gave it him in these words: "The nations
always murmur against their great men: Moses,
Socrates, Goethe, need I recall Christ?" And she
was capable of seeing that which we now, a
hundred years later, are beginning to see, when
the distance of time has set its golden back-
ground behind Goethe's figure and when he has
been endlessly commented on and interpreted.
Through her loving understanding, her religious
reverence, she reached a point in her worship of
Goethe which the whole of humanity will not
reach for a few centuries yet.

The most remarkable thing of all is that Rahel
penetrated to the depths of Goethe's mind without
knowing any more of him than his then published
works. All the riches that have since been
brought to light, above all his wonderful letters,
were unknown to her. But in spite of this she
was able to pierce through all the false notions
that were formed about Goethe the courtier and

Goethe 251

official, the dignities his contemporaries most
admired in Goethe and thus believed to be his
own chief preoccupation.

In this connection I have heard a significant
utterance of Ulrike von Levetzow: that, if she had
understood that he was Goethe, she would perhaps,
from flattered pride, have married him; but, like those
around her, she saw in him the distinguished old
Geheimrat, who talked about stars and stones and
flowers, while she found all this tedious and listened
so badly that Goethe used to say: "Is my dear child
not listening again ?' ' And when he gave her his works
with notes made specially for her, she put them on one
side and, on Goethe's asking her one day: "Has my
dear child been dipping into me? was obliged to con-
fess with shame that she had not ! ' '

So little idea had a young girl "of good family,"
about 1820, of what Goethe was, when she was the
object of his love ! If we compare her with Rahel in
her garret nearly forty years earlier, the maturity of
Rahel's understanding of Goethe will be seen for the
first time in its true light.

Rahel lives in, -and like every child of her time
receives impressions from, the age of enlighten-
ment, the period of the Revolution, the romantic
age, Young Germany, and Saint-Simonism. But
there is not one of these phases in which Goethe
does not exercise an influence incomparable with

252 Rahel Varnhagen

all others on Rahel's view of life, even when she
stands nearer to certain of these manifestations
of the time than he does; a difference in attitude
which depended partly on the disparity of their
ages, partly on that of their characters. But
Rahel could combine her love of Goethe with her
sympathy for movements which to a more super-
ficial view would appear irreconcilable with her
comprehension of him. She could do this be-
cause she had penetrated so deeply into Goethe
that she understood that he was not against the
movements of the time, the idea of national
unity, for instance, and the demand for social
reforms, but that he looked at them from a
higher point of view than public opinion.

It was the same with Goethe's view of life.
While the Romantic School, in its enthusiasm for
"faith," which Rahel found lacking in calmness,
chasteness, devotion, and reverence and therefore
regarded as an aesthetic pastime, ignores Goethe's
piety, Rahel has the most intimate comprehension
of it. In connection with Spinoza, whom she
loves because he has "the fine character of the
thinker, that of being honest, impersonal, gentle,
calm, " she enters into Faust's answer to Gretchen's
question about his religion. Rahel calls this

Goethe 253

answer "the most beautiful prayer." "And
how many prayers," she continues, "has not
that soul poured out, that gives this answer!"

I divide men and women into three groups:
those who are "Goethereif,"1 those who are not
yet so, and those who will never be so. Rahel
may be called Goethe-ripe in the fullest sense;
in that she not only understood Goethe most
profoundly, but lived wholly in his spirit —
a thing which cannot be said of his romantic
admirers, male and female. Her wisdom of life,
as concentrated in the words, "to feel the present
moment and to be able to seize it, that is the art
of life, " is like drops of honey from Goethe's hive.
Rahel advised a person in sorrow to read Wilhelm
Meister, "as others read the Bible." And just
because Rahel herself read Goethe so, she found
more in him than any one else did. How Goethe
had penetrated her being is shown in the way she
quotes him: in every mood — sorrow, or joy — he is
her master, guide, and oracle. She reads him
when young and on her deathbed; indeed, the

1 This expression has been ascribed to Auerbach. But, as
Frau Professor Furtwaengler informed me, it originated with her
mother, Frau Dorn, who made use of it in Auerbach's presence.
He was so delighted with the word that he asked to be allowed to
adopt it, and thus it passed into general use.

254 Rahel Varnhagen

last words she read and wrote were by and about
him; she ranks people according to their under-
standing of Goethe, and she regards the further-
ing of this understanding as the task of her
life.

When Frau von Wolzogen told Rahel that
some of her sayings about Goethe had done him
a great deal of good, accustomed as he was to
misunderstanding, Rahel felt deeply grateful
that she had been able to bring happiness to him,
that "king of the Germans, of these blind and
unhappy people who will awake a century after
his death." At the same time Rahel utters the
moving words, which, spoken by her, one feels to
be true: that, if she knew any one who could love,
honour, admire, worship him more than herself,
understand him better, interpret more correctly
"every word, every syllable, every sigh," who
was always "in agreement and satisfied with him"
in the same degree as herself, then she, Rahel,
would remain for ever unknown to Goethe and
would "lead this other one to him." Yes, she
declares, if there was an empress "who was born
to worship him, I would almost give her my heart
and my insight — would certainly often lend
them! . ."

Goethe 255

"My existence has come to his knowledge : that this
man should know what it was to be worshipped,
acknowledged, studied, grasped, and loved with dis-
cerning hearts by his contemporaries was the height
of all my earthly desires and tasks. This perfected
human being, this representative, who includes all
others in himself and has such power to show them to
us. This priest, this true messenger! He now says
with satisfaction that he is understood — that is, loved,
loved with a love that only he could evoke. And
this /have given him."

Rahel has a right to this proud certainty. It is
worthy of note that Emerson uses the expression
" representative men " in just the same sense as Rahel
here uses it of Goethe. But while Emerson makes
Goethe representative in a restricted sense, Rahel
does so in an unrestricted, and thus shows that her
insight was deeper than Emerson's.

It was an unspeakable joy to Rahel when she
found (through Wahrheit und Dichtung) how fully
she had understood Goethe and his work. For
she had seen by his writings that his life must
have been full of "great afflictions," and to the
ridiculous myth of the cold and clear Olympian
Goethe Rahel did not contribute a syllable.

One of Rahel's deepest sayings of Goethe is
that in Wilhelm Meister he had created a second
Don Quixote; that Goethe and Cervantes, by
seeing with pure eyes, became the vindicators of

256 Rahel Varnhagen

the human race. Through all "follies and errors"
they show the "true figure and deepest soul" of
their heroes: the purest, noblest, most honest
soul, while the world calls them both fools.

Rahel's friendship for a person was measured
by that person's love of Goethe. And, if one who
was sympathetic to her did not already do so,
Rahel had no more lively wish than that he should
learn to know and admire Goethe.

If an admirer of Goethe wished to make Rahel's
acquaintance, she sent him a message that he
was to treat her as an old friend, for Goethe was
"the centre of union of all that can and will be
called by the name of man. " When Prince Louis
Ferdinand had met Goethe at Weimar he wrote
to Rahel that he knew he was now "worth three
thousand thalers more in her eyes." And Rahel
on her side rejoiced at the fact that "the most
human prince of the age " had learned to appreciate
its greatest poet. When the young Heine became
Rahel's friend, she enquired how it was with his
Goethe-religion; and he was soon able to assure
her that he was "no longer a blind heathen, but
had received his sight."

Rahel indefatigably recommends Goethe to
every young person susceptible of culture as the

Goethe 257

great educator of the century in genuine culture.
She never neglects an opportunity of crying:
"May Goethe live for ever and under all circum-
stances!" When her friend, the Frenchman
Custine, asserted that she went so far in her
admiration of Goethe that she lost what was
otherwise her most distinguishing trait, her
independence, she replied that he was mistaken,
for with regard to genius she was never independ-
ent, it possessed absolute power over her. Nay,
she regards it as her special spiritual good fortune
and beauty to be able to love what is good and
great with this deep, passionate "worship, with
clear consciousness."

She suffers from every word against Goethe,
and when Custine, for instance, had expressed
some unfavourable opinions in a letter, Rahel
returned the letter to him with the explanation
that she could not keep any censure of Goethe
by her!

Rahel could say of herself with truth that she
was the person "who would always have "wor-
shipped and idolised" Goethe, even if no one
else had been found to extol, understand, and
admire him. She lived in Goethe so completely

that other German poets seemed to her more
17

258 Rahel Varnhagen

or less unnecessary beside him. Like Nietzsche
she found that Schiller, for instance, paled by the
side of Goethe.

After speaking with admiration of Schiller, she con-
tinues: " But then Goethe comes with his power, his
purpose, his perfection, and delineation, thought,
maturity, perfection, and power of expression, his
hard-won wisdom, his contemplative and surveying
melancholy, his wise, distilled cheerfulness, with his vue
d'oiseau, with his starry gaze, with his godlike breast,
where one not only rests but finds peace, then in
all other poets there is lacking something— great."

At an advanced age Rahel writes of a festival
performance of Tasso: "What a joy to me! Eight
hundred people had to hear Goethe's godlike words
and take them into their souls .... Heaven, how
I worship him ever anew; how I weep at Tasso, like
the prompter in Meister, at every beautiful passage!"

To quote Rahel's many cardinal opinions on
Goethe's works would carry me too far. I con-
tent myself with recalling the fundamental truth
she expresses hi the words, that the old poets
only knew woman, the wife, mother, sister, whereas
what made Goethe the new, the modern poet
was that he knew women, that he had seen
into the hearts of individuals and there dis-
covered every nook and corner. How deep is
Rahel's saying that, whether Goethe had done

Goethe 259

it intentionally or not, it shows the intuition of
a great poet that in Wilhelm Meister he makes
the three women die, who could love — Marianne,
Aurelie, and Mignon — since "as yet there is no
place prepared for such!" And referring to
Goethe's knowledge of human nature in general
she exclaims: "How often he must have listened
and known how to get all kinds of confidences
from people, besides his own vision!"

Again, in 1827, Rahel writes to Varnhagen of
Goethe: "Great the god!" and declares that,
when others dare to touch him and disparage
him, she sees all the more "that he is a god: in
gifts, greatness, domination, harmony, abundance,
wisdom, and eternal growth."

Rahel's feeling for Goethe was a deep intellect-
ual love without the slightest trace of amorousness,
without a glimpse of the ordinary woman's
interest in a great man, the interest which aims
at making him interested in herself! The first
time Rahel met Goethe was at Carlsbad in 1795.
Rahel said it was no doubt "a marvel and a stroke
of fortune" that chance threw her and Goethe to-
gether, but she felt that there was also a neces-
sity in it; that certain people must come together.

260 Rahel Varnhagen

Her dignity had withheld her from directly seeking
a meeting, or even an exchange of correspondence,
and also, no doubt, her dislike of being in any way
confused with the kind of women who played at
the worship which to Rahel herself was the deepest
earnest. Of this meeting she wrote in words as
moving as they are profound:

"I always imagine that good wishes, truly heart-felt
wishes, which one thinks ought to draw down the
stars, must be able to accomplish something. Had
I not really the fullest right to see Goethe ?" . . .

" The satisfaction of seeing him and enjoying his
society made me less happy than the thought: now
you, too, are lucky for once; you, too, have fortune with
you, so after all life is on your side in one thing. For
it is terrible to have to look upon one's self as the
one creature unfortunate in everything; and this I
have done, for, except this, so far as I know, no-
thing has ever chanced aright with me." . . .

Goethe gave some friends of Rahel's an ap-
preciation of her which shows how, in spite of her
inability to appear to advantage when she was
deeply moved, he had penetrated her whole
nature.

"She is a girl of extraordinary intellect, who is con-
stantly thinking, and full of feeling — where can one
find the like? It is a rare thing. Oh, we were con-

Goethe 261

stantly together, we associated in a very friendly and
confidential way .... She is an affectionate girl ;
she is strong in all her feelings, and yet easy in all her
utterances; the former quality gives her a high signi-
ficance, the latter makes her agreeable; the former
causes us to admire her great originality, and the latter
makes this originality amiable, pleasing to us. It
cannot be denied that there are many people in the
world who at least appear original ; but what security
have we that it is not merely appearance? That what
we are inclined to take for the inspiration of a lofty
mind is not merely the effect of a passing mood? — It
is not so with her ; she is, so far as I know her, her-
self at every instant, always stirred in a way peculiar
to her, and yet calm — in short, she is what I might call
a beautiful soul ; the more intimately one gets to know
her, the more one feels attracted and agreeably held
by her."

At a later date Goethe calls Rahel " a remarkable,
perceptive, combining, helping nature. . . . She
does not give an opinion, she has the subject itself, and
in so far as she does not possess it, it does not concern
her."

This pronouncement was occasioned by Varn-
hagen's sending Goethe (anonymously) his own and
Rahel's references to Goethe himself in their letters to
one another. When she heard of this, she wrote that,
little as she sought in general to assert herself or win
approval, that had given her real pleasure.

" To be able once to lay my really unspeakable love
and admiring reverence at the feet of the grandest
man and human being, has been, in respect of its

262 Rahel Varnhagen

duration and intensity, the secret, quiet wish of my
whole life. In one thing I have followed my inmost
heart, in keeping discreetly away from Goethe.
Heaven, how right I was! How chaste, how unpro-
faned, how well preserved through a whole unhappy
life was the adoration of my heart, which I could now
show him." And, after saying that this " adoration "
pervades all her existence, that almost every "word she
has written contains it, she hopes that Goethe himself
will now be able to put this reserve to her credit,
since he must see how difficult it is to conceal within
one's self in silence through a whole lifetime so
loving an admiration.

It is of great interest that Goethe's opinion on
the two correspondents is to the effect that one
of them (Varnhagen) has the receptive, the other
(Rahel) the productive disposition. They per-
ceived this themselves and it was on this account
that Varnhagen, whose strength and whose
weaknesses were of a feminine kind, felt himself
completed by Rahel, whose character showed
that union of masculine and feminine nature
which constitutes genius. Both felt Goethe's
sympathy for their alliance to be a consecration
of it. Indeed, Rahel wrote that nothing gave
better proof of Varnhagen's love for her than the
fact that he also loved Goethe. For, she con-
tinues, "one cannot love without loving Goethe;

Goethe 263

.he is the ideal, expressed in terms of reality:
life itself." And Varnhagen on his side writes
that he meets with Rahel in Goethe's writings
as much as in her own letters. For in the former
he finds "the same purity of vision, the same
strong, truthful nature, on the whole more prac-
tical than anything else, but at the same time
lovable and exceedingly idealistic." He lays
his finger on the very centre of Rahel's mental
kinship with Goethe in saying that he has learned
of her "to put all time into the power of the
present moment" and to perceive that the present
is "so mighty, so fascinating, just because it is."
Twenty years passed before Rahel saw Goethe
again, during her stay at Frankfort in 1815.
Brandes has pointed out with much subtlety
how Rahel gave an unconscious illustration of
her great, pure, and humble feeling for Goethe
when, knowing Goethe was at Gerbermuhle, she
did not visit him, not wishing to force herself
upon him: "I have received an infinity from
him, and he nothing from me." But chance
helped her in such a way that the meeting came
about naturally, as she desired it. One day,
when Goethe was making a pilgrimage to one of
the beloved spots of his youth, Rahel saw him

264 Rahel Varnhagen

driving by and cried out: "There's Goethe!"
She describes how she first turned crimson, then
pale, how all her limbs trembled for half an hour
afterwards, how she loved her eyes for having
seen him! Thus Goethe found out that she was
in the neighbourhood, and three days later he
paid her a visit. She was in the act of dressing.
"Sacrificing myself so as not to keep him waiting
a moment," she hurried down in her dressing-
gown. Afterwards she bitterly regretted having
followed this impulse, for the consciousness of
her "want of charm" made her more embarrassed
than usual, so that, as at their former meeting,
she was quite unable to show him the joy she
felt. So it is, she continues, when after "so many
years of love and life and prayer" one at last has
a moment. But she felt that the mere presence of
Goethe had given her the accolade, and that indeed
no Olympian god could have made her prouder
by his visit. And, when he had gone, she put on
her best dress to show her enhanced self-con-
sciousness. For, she says, "like Prince Louis I
now feel, among brothers, worth ten thousand
thalers more: Goethe has been to see me!"

Any one who, after this description, can compare
Rahel's feeling for Goethe with that of any other

Goethe 265

of his contemporaries, knows nothing either of
feeling, or Rahel, or Goethe!

Ten years later Rahel saw Goethe for the last
time, when, in 1825, she and Varnhagen visited
him at Weimar in the course of a journey and
spent a whole rich evening at his home. In
describing the visit, after relating some girlish
expressions of her admiration, Rahel concludes
with the words: "When all is said and done,
he truly flows in my blood." None of Rahel's
contemporaries and no Goethe-worshipper that
has succeeded her could have used these strong
words with more truth, and yet they were no
stronger than the reality of lifelong faith and love
that they expressed.

What Gentz said of Rahel and romanticism —
"You are romanticism itself, you were this before
the word was invented" — may with equal truth
be said of Rahel's cult of Goethe. It was Rahel's
own inmost nature that determined her affinity
to Goethe and .to the Romantic School, so far as
the latter coincided with the renaissance Goethe
accomplished. Individualism, in art, in religion,
in life, that was the import of this renaissance.
Nay, this feature is so decisive that Lamprecht
chose for the new mental attitude the word

266 Rahel Varnhagen

subjectivism to designate it more completely. In
Werther, Gotz, Stella, Goethe opens the battle of
the individual against ethical and aesthetic con-
ventions, which the romanticists, Young Germany,
and all so-called "spirits of revolt" in every land
have carried on up to the present day. And
even to-day it is above all through her sub-
jectivism that Rahel is our contemporary.

To confute those who are now attempting to
make Goethe into a Christian moralist we have
not only an endless mass of direct evidence from
his life and writings, we have also quantities of
indirect evidence, among which that of Rahel,
who never found any contradiction between his
ethics and her own, is as strong as any. The
watchword for his moral actions which Goethe
announced when young in a letter to Lavater:
"All your ideals will not lead me astray from
being true and good and evil like Nature" — this
watchword Goethe never abandoned, he only
extended its import. And as after a thousand
years a forest arises from the little winged seed,
so has all the individualism of the new age, even
Nietzsche's revaluation of ethical values, grown
up from the fundamental view that lies in Goethe's
youthful words just quoted. Above all in this

Goethe 267

respect Rahel is of all Goethe's contemporaries
the one who understood him most profoundly.

Rahel expresses the liveliest satisfaction when
Goethe's works justify her in her conflict with
the world, in her striving to attain essentiality,
in her passion for the values that others called
chimeras. In him she strengthens her own •
conviction that the all-important thing is "to be
something," and that this takes a long time,
that "we must not be in a hurry to be something. "
Of Goethe she learned the wisdom she imparted
to a friend: that, when one has discovered one's
real self, one ought first to plough up the field of
one's soul, then let it become firm again slowly
and of itself, and finally fertile, alike in "bad
weather and fine weather." And that book of
Goethe's which Rahel read most often, Wilhelm
Meister, is the only great handbook for this kind
of husbandry.

Rahel undoubtedly had to thank Goethe that
she did not remain at variance with existence,
but reached that purified love of life which is the
noblest essence of sorrow. She, who in her youth
thought it her fate to bleed to death owing to her
Jewish nationality; she, who then possessed, in
Goethe's judgment, stronger feelings than he had

268 Rahel Varnhagen

observed in any one else, together with "the
power of suppressing them at every instant" —
how mournful, how deeply sunk in the darkness
of her destiny Rahel might have become, if she
had not breathed the liberating air of Goethe's
world !

"What I have not received I can forget; but what
has happened to me I cannot forget. God protect
everyone from understanding this!"

Thus Rahel wrote in 1799, and in a certain sense it
always remained true. But by degrees she learned in
Goethe's school to submit to the law of life that he
has expressed in the words: "Not only so much that
is impossible, but also so much that is possible is
withheld from us human beings."

Gradually Rahel learns to resign herself when
faced by what is painfullest in her life and in that
of humanity : she learns that we "fall like blossoms
before the great, unknown wind, " we, who might
nevertheless have become fruits. ' ' Calm thoughts
and a great feeling for nature" help her to attain
this resignation in face of the hardest of all : that
"careless fate does not demand of us all that we
might have accomplished."

In this resignation she received the greatest
help from Goethe.

Goethe 269

Through him she was born again, born to that
kingdom where there is no question of Jew or
Christian, woman or man, bond or free: the
kingdom of the holy spirit.

CHAPTER VIII

SENSE OF BEAUTY

RAHEL'S aesthetic judgments are excellent ex-
amples of "thinking one's self into things," which
Weininger appears to have called attention to as
woman's weakness, while a young Swedish phi-
losopher has endeavoured to prove that man also
thinks with his feelings. z

Rahel's judgments are replete with mental
pictures and complicated; a long development
lies behind the few brief words in which she
expresses her disapproval or her delight.

She rarely mentions the arts of painting and
sculpture. In Paris, Amsterdam, Antwerp, and
Dresden, Rahel had seen great art, and she has,
in fact, expressed her admiration of Rembrandt
and Durer, amongst others. But the imitative
arts had not nearly the same importance to her
as the theatre, dancing, and music. Especially

1 John Landquist, Filosofiska Essayer, 1906.
270

Sense of Beauty 271

as regards the theatre Rahel exercised in her time
an influence both direct and indirect. What she
says about authors coming to see her, although
she herself is no author, is also true of actors.

"As a rule people call upon authors; I am only a
wretched reader, and the writers run after me."

Rahel probably no more tried her hand at the
fashionable amusement of amateur-acting than she
did at authorship. But her criticism was valued so
highly that not only her friends among the actresses,
but other theatrical artists asked her advice in diffi-
cult problems.

Above all Rahel, like the romanticists, tried to
break down the Kotzebue-Iffland vogue, both di-
rectly by her criticism, and indirectly by demand-
ing of authors and actors truth to nature, real
passion, and psychological individualisation. An
actor convinced her of the genuineness of his vo-
cation if he "always and instantly found the na-
ture of the thing," that is, of the character and
state of mind of the personality he was to pre-
sent, and in addition to this the correct means of
expressing it. At this time it is, of course, impos-
sible to verify the correctness of Rahel's judgment
in questions of actors or musical performers; we
can only enjoy the genuineness of her own indigna-
tion or enthusiasm.

272 Rahel Varnhagen

She writes, for example, in 1793 of the singer
Marchetti: " She has sung to me; she is the unique,
amiable woman. I am beside myself. I too have
paid my court to her. Her every movement is a
charm, a magic, a madness of laughter or tears. Such
singing, such cooing, such expression — there is only
one expression. . . . This is passion, this is a
gift of the gods, this is music, this is beauty."

And whatever art it may be that Rahel is
enjoying at the moment, she always feels, when
the artist is a genuine one, that he is "one of the
elect of mankind," to whom she tenders all her
warmest gratitude.

It was a necessary consequence of the circum-
stances of the time that Rahel, like all those who
longed for greatness and truth on the stage,
should be induced to overrate the dramatic
element in Goethe's plays. With Schiller, on
the other hand, she is clear-sighted, almost cool;
she points out with justice that in certain of his
dramas the orator speaks rather than the poet,
and Schiller's imitators are her horror. Her
knowledge of Shakespeare was profound, and in
his humoristic-tragic representation of humanity
she found a revelation of the very nature of art,
of being "life in life," as well as "the deep-rooted
Germanic tendency to introspection. " Wherever

Sense of Beauty 273

Rahel found a didactic one-sidedness, there she
also found inadequate art. A drama, a novel,
she says, must be a complete expression of the
world; everything that appears there will be
beautiful. But every genius sees there something
different and represents it according to his tem-
perament, gives it his colour, just as the old earth
looks new in the light of every new day. Such
are the works of great masters; everything that
we can find in the world, we find in them; all
great thoughts, but no dressed-up dummies of
thought.

" A work of art must not always tell me what it
means, but must show it at once."

"As the Greeks speak of men, as they always sum up
everything to the uttermost limit and say it quite
simply, so that it is perfectly great and sounds noble ;
they always leave everything as it is and merely view
it and relate it."

Rahel never felt the need of the romantic
school's alteration of aesthetic values; whatever
was legitimate in this was already realised by
Goethe, whose born ally Rahel was, while the
one-sided dogmas of the romanticists inspired
in her an indignation that was often "deep-
cutting" in its expressions. All kinds of personal

18

274 Rahel Varnhagen

satires, parodies, and travesties were intolerable
to her, and it has already been pointed out that
she abjured early in life the kind of wit that is
indifferent how it may wound or where it may
strike. Rahel's wit in daily life was the humorous
play of colours made up of tears and sunshine.
At times it was a cultural force, a searchlight
that illuminated vanity or lying, stupidity or
coarseness. But there is not one of Rahel's
sallies that has the sheen of cold steel.

One thing that excites Rahel against the
romantic school is its unjust criticism. When,
for example, the romantic current of fashion leads
A. W. Schlegel to disparage Racine, Rahel calls
him "a dull, sick critic, who knows nothing of
love." Again, in opposition to this dogmatic
blindness, she instances how hard a Lessing, for
instance, has had to fight for what "now may be
put in plain words in any newspaper" ; how unjust
it is to detract from the importance of a champion
of truth because the truth he strove for has now
become "a commonplace"; how short-sighted
it is to imagine that one is at liberty to despise
Racine and Voltaire, because one has forgotten
what the age they were compelled to live in was
like.

Sense of Beauty 275

Rahel insists strongly that mere bookmen, who
have never taken part in life, are incapable of
putting great vital force into their books, and
that no one can understand the life of bygone
times who does not transfer it to our own
conditions — a thought as true as it is anti-
romantic.

Rahel happily lacked what is called "a uniform
view of art" — the kind of view that has never
accomplished anything but a restriction of love
and comprehension of art. In this respect a
uniform aesthetic system operates like all other
dogmatic theories, of which Rahel rightly says
that they "dry and burn up the brain and
annihilate the rest of the mental functions."

While thus the romantic theory first extolled
and then depreciated Goethe, Rahel, both before
and after the romantic school's cult of Goethe,
approached his works with a reverence free from
preconception: she did not wish, like the romantic
school, to see in them a confirmation of her own
theories, she only wanted a confirmation of Goethe.
When the romanticists began to turn away from
Goethe, she had done with them, and their ever-
increasing tendency to Catholicism only inspired
her with disgust.

276 Rahel Varnhagen

Thus she wrote : ' ' Friedrich Schlegel abuses Goethe ;
therefore he stays where he is and grows stupid."
And to Varnhagen, who had quarrelled with A. W.
Schlegel about Goethe, she wrote that he ought to
have despatched Schlegel thus: "You are not the
intelligent man I thought, in any respect, and you
show only too plainly that you neither know nor
see anything at all of Nature : and for that very reason
you see nothing at all of Goethe. Good-bye."

' ' They first work themselves into a regular catholic,
catalogic, chronological, post-mediaeval, and histori-
cal mood, and then they set about assigning our
eyes, and the Greeks, to their right place; and they
try to put right those who have the senses they them-
selves lack. Senses, senses, our five senses !

The words last quoted were written by Rahel
in connection with her admiration for Heinse,
which was due to the very fact that he used his
"right five senses" and possessed them to such a
degree that he "inhaled and smelt" the picture
he described. She admired, and recommended
Varnhagen to study, Heinse's style, in which
the words came "gushing forth in such pearl-like
finish, with so little premeditation."

She admired in Heinse the complete indepen-
dence with which he "had gathered everything
into himself," from the slightest sensation to the
most serious thoughts; whereby he did not adopt

Sense of Beauty 277

anything even from the greatest masters "without
transforming it into his own blood by some new
insect- or lion-process."

Rahel's own assimilation was of this kind.
This was the kind of originality she looked for,
and loved when she found it.

Among the romanticists she respected and
loved "unspeakably" Novalis, just on account
of the depth of his individuality, the genuineness
of his feeling. But when, impelled by the theories
of romanticism, not by his own inmost soul, he
wrote his Heinrich von Ofterdingen in opposi-
tion to Goethe, she condemned it absolutely as
an expression of the profoundest error of the
romantic school, the doctrine of "the poetry
of poetry."

1 In this connection Rahel maintained that the
productions of the romanticists were unpoetical
precisely on account of their erroneous idea that
poetry was not to be found in real life, where
Goethe looked for it, but that it was necessary
to invent "new subjects for poetry," subjects
which produce nothing but emptiness and tedi-
ousness owing to their fantastical premeditation.
To be a poet, says Rahel, is "to enclose a piece of
life in a book, " like Goethe.

278 Rahel Varnhagen

"Poetry," says Rahel, "exists in Nature; that is,
wherever our mind is able to become aware of any-
thing free and significant ; therefore also in the nature
of the events of human life and consequently also in
descriptions of the same."

Rahel values Kleist above all because he "is
true and sees truly, " and because she finds human
nature, and its conflicts with real life, in his works,
while romantic fantasies like those of Tieck were
in a high degree unsympathetic to her.

But above all these words of Rahel's hit off a
fundamental weakness of the romanticists: "To
have talent one must have character; abilities
and natural disposition by themselves make no
talent." No doubt she had many friends among
the pioneers of romanticism, but she never
marched as a soldier in its ranks; she admired
what was genuine in the movement, as in every-
thing else, but her heart was not at home in that
mediaeval world: it belonged to great, sunny,
productive Nature, to all the manifestations of
life; she had the same love of health as her beloved
Goethe. Art was to her a religious and sacred
matter; but the simple relations of life, order
and loyalty in performing them, cheerfulness in
work and perseverance — all these qualities de-

Sense of Beauty 279

spised by the romanticists, possessed in her eyes a
religious consecration in the same, or perhaps a
higher degree. That is to say, when they were
the result of love for these life-values, and not of
philistine mediocrity. She granted the right to
set aside current morality, but only when this
was brought about not by want of character,
but by character. And by character Rahel means,
in the creative artist, a pronounced intellectual
individuality combined with a broad and well-
thought-out view of the world and a conduct of
life in agreement therewith. "One cannot become
an artist at six o'clock in the evening," she says of
actors; "one has to be one all day long." And for
her the same held good of all artists.

It is one of Rahel's maxims that there is much
more talent in the world than people think, but
that it is hidden through want of courage to be
one's self; this courage is the strength of all the
great men, while their weak imitators forget
themselves and .try to present a world without
themselves being in it!

"Courage . . . is everything, that is, moral courage!
External heroic courage is a trifle, often petty. But
inner courage and self-reliance before a world of pre-
judices, one's own and other people's — if you had that,

28o Rahel Varnhagen

you would be just as cheerful in yourself, just as firm
and just as sensible as I am. . . . The much-
praised modesty of spirit is so seldom anything but
a glorified moral cowardice." [In a letter to G. von
Brinckmann.J

She writes golden words on the same subject to
Varnhagen : "I should only wish to advise you to be
altogether yourself; to work in a regular orgy of
exuberance, to have full consideration for yourself,
and to act as though you were alone in the world, or
at least as though you spoke a language of your own
and had first to wait and see whether any others
might come and speak the same."

Rahel could never gather anything from the
accounts of others, but only from the thing itself;
she was unable "to learn anything from answers,
to which she had not put the questions herself."
She says too: "One notices at once whether
people get their ideas from books or directly from
the world, from Nature's own colours and forms. "
Rahel's "ignorance" causes her to employ no
terminology, but spontaneous, self-made ex-
pressions; her inability to accept ready-made
results makes her never use a set phrase but
always give a point of view of her own. She
lived in her favourite authors as she did in her
most personal experiences; and all this made her
judgments so essential, so quickening, that by

Sense of Beauty 281

degrees they were spread among the whole of
literary Germany. Her verbal and written utter-
ances were quoted everywhere, and thus in many
respects she had an important influence on the
formation or transformation of the spirit of the
age. Indeed, people were so intent upon getting
her opinion that she often withheld it, since she
was unwilling to increase the mass of unoriginal
repetition or add stones to the burden which
incompetence always has to bear. Moreover,
Rahel's keen eye could even then see that critic-
ism threatened a danger to production. "Berlin,"
she says, "is far too fond of polishing up its
artistic feeling and lighting up its consciousness
thereof with candles from every factory." She
is afraid that intellectual weakness may be the
result of thus forcing a way into "the most uncon-
strained depths of humanity." What indeed
would she have said of the interviews and
criticisms of our time?

She regarded herself as the most eminent of
her contemporaries regarded her, as "one of the
foremost critics of Germany." But her criticism
was confined to a highly cultivated circle, the
members of which she doubtless influenced in-
dividually, but only through the force of her

282 Rahel Varnhagen

arguments. Public criticism, on the other hand,
fixes the value or worthlessness of a production
for a newspaper-reading public which is itself
uncritical, and does this, not through the force
of its arguments, but through the strength of its
position! And this makes the greater part of
modern public criticism a hindrance to culture,
if personal faculty of judgment and intensified
emotional life are to count as culture!

Rahel, like all whose relation to art is one of
personal love, became more exacting with in-
creasing years, while at the same time she re-
tained her receptivity for everything new that
was good.

In a letter, in which she describes Prince Puckler-
Muskau's "true child's nature " in noticing and picking
up everything new, she says: " It is corruption and not
lack of understanding when a person is unwilling to
absorb any new idea, inconvenient to himself; it is
stupidity when such ideas present themselves to him
and he does not notice that they are new; it is the
greatest infamy when he recognises them and yet
denies them."

Among other proofs of Rahel's unaltered recep-
tivity is her great admiration for Victor Hugo and
his "sentiment du vrai"; she calls his Notre-Dame a
great masterpiece of Gothic architecture.

Sense of Beauty 283

And after the age of sixty she still declares that
she loves what she has always loved: air, flowers,
fields, music, the theatre, discussion, that is,
sociality, order, cleanliness, elegance, wit, con-
sistency of thought, although it was no longer
so easy for her to find all these things as it had
been formerly.

And is it so, with us all? Yes, we may say that
in youth most people's love of art is as wide and as
shallow as a flooded meadow, but gradually alters
its extent till it becomes as narrow and as deep as
the well of an old castle.

Rahel perceived, with Schiller, that play is the
child's demonstration of art and a thing as pro-
foundly serious as the play of grown-up people —
art. The play of the child and that of the artist,
says Rahel, both have for their end the creation of
a new existence, which cannot as yet be attained
by any other means. But, in opposition to the
romantic school,. Rahel is not content with trans-
forming existence in art, she wishes to transform
existence itself to the beauty and harmony of
which art gives the type. To a scheme of
national art she wisely objects that all the artistic
creations of a nation must be national; nay, they

284 Rahel Varnhagen

cannot avoid being so; but that no talking about
"a national art" can call such an art into being.
For it is not created from a programme, but from
"the healthiest, fullest feeling for nature, from
innocent senses, that is, senses that have not been
weakened through their education, and from an
impressionable disposition," Even in its para-
phrase, in Fouqu6's Sigurd, the Nibelungen myth
grips Rahel with such force that she has to put
down the book and "talk aloud and moan ... as
if I had only seen Lady Macbeth or a set of Jews
weeping the whole night long. " But the power-
ful impression of this tragically human story did
not make her abjure her hatred of "any other
than the Olympian mythology, of Northern sagas,
runes, and the like, and the new hope in the old
gods of mist. " As soon as this element becomes
dominant and thrusts the human aside, her admi-
ration is ended. And has not every experiment,
the Nibelungen Ring included, confirmed the
correctness of Rahel's instinct as regards the
unserviceableness of these gods of mist? For
in the "Ring" it is only the human beings who
are gods!

Rahel insists that a nation's only task with re-
gard to all kinds of creative activity is to give them

Sense of Beauty 285

a free course, to see that they enjoy favourable
conditions, and to protect them from over-zealous
national vanity.

How completely Rahel inwardly dissociated
herself from the romantic school is best seen in
her most immediate manifestations of life, above
all in her feeling for nature, which is surprisingly
modern. For example, when Rahel wonders
whether the earth itself is not perhaps a sentient
being, which suffers from all the misery it is com-
pelled to support and perhaps finds its consola-
tion in a feeling of fellowship with all the other
beings in space. Or when, after a ride on a donkey
through a mountainous tract, she tries to explain
the indescribable delight this ride has given her by
the thought that in some earlier existence in Spain
she may have taken just such a ride in pleasant
company, an idea that in our time has found such
profound expression in Lafcadio Hearn. Rahel
had all her life, even in her youth, that feeling for
nature to which the landscape becomes a state of
the soul (AmieT). But she never weaves human
situations or feelings into the landscape or into
particular natural objects in the romantic way.
As a rule the feeling for nature in the young is

286 Rahel Varnhagen

always romantic in the sense that the young see
themselves mirrored in nature, and indeed in life
as a whole, and the mirror reflects the uneasiness,
the longing, the happiness, or the revolt that fills
their own souls. The more our innermost ego
frees itself from our own destiny, the calmer we
thus become; we are then ourselves a mirror to
nature, and our relation to nature becomes at the
same time a more impersonal and a more intimate
one.

That Rahel passed through this development
at an early age is perhaps one reason why her feel-
ing for nature remained from early life even to the
last the wholly direct one, which absorbs nature
completely with all the senses and all the soul,
without allowing a reflection, a feeling belonging
to human life to interpose between itself and this
immediate — one might almost say vegetative — sen-
sation. Varnhagen tells us that during a journey
through the Black Forest he had an opportunity
of observing Rahel's "capacity for the highest en-
joyment of nature." The strength and fulness
with which she directly enjoyed mountains and
waterfalls, meadows and trees, sunrises and stars,
delighted Varnhagen as much as did nature itself.

I have referred in another connection to Rahel's

Sense of Beauty 287

plant-like sensitiveness to atmospheric influences.
She felt mild air literally as rebirth. The first
of May she calls the most important day of the
year, its birthday, and she cannot conceive why it
was not made New Year's Day. She wonders
whether her predilection for May is due to her
having breathed its air when newly born, to the
impressions of May having been the first to meet
her eye on earth.

Rahel's short pictures of landscape are impres-
sionist, purely impressions of the senses, but the
essential ones, just those the picture leaves in the
memory.

Thus, for instance, she describes how she showed
the Prague Valley to Varnhagen and some friends in
these words: "... I am as proud, when you delight
in the view, as if I had made it myself, or discovered it
and kept it for the enjoyment of my friends in light
and shade, in scent, verdure, and vegetation ....
The valley is more beautiful than ever. . . . Hazels,
wild briars, cornflowers, oaks, beeches, and thousands
of herbs press forward in their growth, more beauti-
ful, richer, more luxuriant, calmer than ever, in the
most golden sunshine, which floods this valley of the
gods." . . .

"Round about, to an immeasurable distance, hori-
zon beyond horizon ; the most incredible play of light
and shade over the cornfields." She describes how the

288 Rahel Varnhagen

light plays upon the river that creeps like a beast
through the valley; upon villages and farms, upon
"dark, obstinate mountains. Sheep were feeding,
timber was felled in the mountain woods and lay
there, clean, dead and scented. . . . Bells, peace,
everything."

At another time she rejoices in the thousand scents
of the fields, the hemp, the hazels, the growing corn,
and a sunshine " which regularly raged over the
country with light and shade."

Or again, she delights in a garden, "where there
was such a mad riot of flowers" that she had
never seen the like. She enumerates fifteen ar-
bours, among them a great bower of limes, flower-
ing within and without, and all around a symphony
of bees ; millions of stocks, a little avenue of stand-
ard roses, and outside the garden broad fields with
waving corn lit by the evening sun.

Prince Puckler- Muskau, famous for his original
and knightly personality, his travels, his fine
writings, his knowledge of the world and his
gardens, belonged to Rahel's circle of friends
during her later years. And on her visits to
Muskau, where the prince had displayed all his
genius in the art of horticulture, Rahel found an
ideal existence: "Nothing is so good as Muskau,"
she says. She came straight out into what was to

Sense of Beauty 289

her the "brewed, refreshing air"; she there found
good friends, full freedom, enough solitude, enough
amusement; she had her little Elise with her and
finally there was "much for the eye and, since
everything proceeds from diligence and thought,
food for them too. " These last words remind one
of the garden conversations in Elective Affinities,
and the whole reminds one of the time when' a
garden was what it is beginning to be again,
material for artistic creation.

During her whole life, and especially as she
grows older, Rahel feels that she gets more out
of "children, verdure, fine eyes, the living word"
than out of books. Flowers become her medicine.
Thus her convalescence after a severe illness began
with a basket of roses, sent her by Heine, and
when she was given on her deathbed a branch of
lilac with young leaves on it, she inhaled the fra-
grance of spring again and again, the last thing she
enjoyed in life, "with deep breaths and in ecstasy. "

These words written at random show Rahel's
feelings at the death of Goethe: "Gentler than
showers in May are children's kisses, the scent of
roses, the notes of the nightingale and the trills of
the lark. Goethe hears them no more. A great
witness is gone. "
19

290 Rahel Varnhagen

These words of Rahel's harmonise closely with
some of Goethe's own, which Rahel did not know,
as they were written in his young days to Frau
von Stein, melancholy words about the time when
he would no more be able to enjoy the glory of the
sun, the sky, and green things, while all these
would shine over his grave. And how deeply
would such an agreement as this have stirred
Rahel, who felt "mad with joy" when she found
in Goethe's autobiography that he and she had
had similar feelings as children, their love of
lightning, for instance, which in Rahel was so
strong that she declared she hated people who
were afraid of it. For just this agreement more
than anything else proceeded from the inmost
necessity of each. The most violent outburst of
grief would have been a feeble expression of
Rahel's feelings at Goethe's death in comparison
with these quiet words. Nothing illustrates more
clearly the depth both of Rahel's understanding
of Goethe and of her own feeling for nature than
the fact that, at the thought of his death, she
suffers above all from his no longer being able to
witness the reawakening of nature in spring.

CHAPTER IX

LETTERS

RAHEL wrote a fine and legible hand, just as she
spoke in a clear and distinct voice. But it is
certain that her written language is far inferior to
her language of conversation, although one can
see that the former has retained a good deal of the
life of the spoken word, and this is shown perhaps
by the very things that make her difficult to read,
the irregularities of construction and punctuation,
the interjections and exclamations. But she has
succeeded in what she aimed at: in writing "con-
versations as they take living shape within one"
— conversations which, as every one knows, do
not shape themselves according to any laws of
composition.

But Rahel might equally well have written
letters, in which, as she says, "the soul wanders at
will, " and at the same time have made them easier

of understanding. That her German was defi-

291

292 Rahel Varnhagen

cient, that, as she complains, "anybody can write
and talk better with much more stupid ideas, " is
no doubt one reason for the heaviness of her style.
But the chief cause is to be found in her lack of the
gift of form, a gift which might have impressed the
artistic stamp even on such products of the mood
of the moment as her letters. This deficiency is
perhaps connected with the obstinate peculiarity
which prevented Rahel, in her own words, from
ever being able to learn anything from another.
When Rahel speaks of her "gross ignorance" and
says "nothing was taught me," this must not be
taken to mean that she had had no opportunity of
learning. On this point she has told us unam-
biguously that the cause lay within herself.

Thus.she adduces the following: "It is true that I
always think of what is essential in what I read, and
that to this end I only make the most rapid use possi-
ble of all means at my command, and then forget
these means completely. ... I arrange every-
thing I hear or read into a whole. . . . All those
who give me instruction begin by preaching some-
thing, which is always taken from a point of view
from which I do not see this thing, and so they talk
for hours without any connection so far as I am con-
cerned. . . . Thus it has been with me with all my
masters. . .-.. .

"Our speech is our lived life; I have invented my

Letters 293

own, so that I have been able to make less use than
many others of ready-made phrases; therefore mine
are often rugged and faulty in all kinds of ways, but
always genuine."

Rahel probably did not know a single date in the
history of Greece, but she read Homer in Voss's
translation; it made her declare that "the Odyssey
seems to me so beautiful that it is positively pain-
ful," and she discovered that Homer is always
great when he speaks of water, as Goethe is when
he speaks of the stars. Probably she could not
enumerate the rivers of Spain, but she knew Don
Quixote. In a word, she was the very opposite of
the kind of talent that passes brilliant examina-
tions and is capable of carrying "completely un-
digested sentences in its head." What Rahel
could not transform into blood of her blood did not
concern her at all. There was such an indestruct-
ible "connection between her abilities,'1 such an
intimate "co-operation between her temperament
and her intelligence, " that there was no room in her
for all the unoriginal ballast of which the views
and opinions of most other people are made up:
she could only keep and only give what was her
own.

This is the incomparable charm of Rahel's

294 Rahel Varnhagen

letters and their unique strength, in the face of
which all weaknesses vanish.

It is natural that a Rahel should wonder whether
we do not talk so much because we cannot express
our inmost meaning ; that she should hope that we
may end by finding "the Word" that will include
in itself all that is now unspeakable; that she
should especially love those words which she found
to contain "whole families of ideas. "

For Rahel's own most felicitous words are just
those that in some respect give expression to some-
thing hitherto unuttered; those of which one may
say that they not only include a "family" but a
whole nation of ideas.

Some one asked Rahel to give her opinion
"quite naively." She answered that she could
promise that and the opinion would still be naive.
For she knew that her originality was so rooted in
her nature that nothing could damage it. And
she says with reference to her letters: "I am
quite unable to fashion myself after anything,
for my raging heart fashions everything in and
about me. "

What is the effect of her not being able to write
better German? Would she otherwise have really
given her correspondents more than she did? Was

Letters 295

she even one of those who ought to have learned
things as others learn them, whether she knew
them or not? Surely not.

Rahel was one of those prophetic natures which
always reach their knowledge by mysterious ways,
as is related of Cassandra, who heard, saw, and
understood everything from the moment she was
found as a child on the floor of the temple, in the
coils of a serpent that licked her ears.

In Rahel's time letter-writing was a social duty
and a social art. Letters were, so to speak, the
supplements of the newspaper press, for they circu-
lated widely and fulfilled, in a refined and discreet
way, functions which the press now performs in a
very different manner. In those days people had
leisure to take pains with their letters, since the
thousand trivialities that now demand a dozen
post cards and two dozen telephone calls a day did
not consume the time and destroy the peace with-
out which letter-writing cannot be developed into
an art.

Rahel was a thorough child of her time in the
importance she attached to letters and the pleasure
they gave her. But, on the other hand, as a
correspondent she was far more of an improviser

296 Rahel Varnhagen

than most of her contemporaries. She is direct
to such a degree that her letters sometimes resemble
a stream of fire, sometimes a flood of tears, some-
times a play of sunlight flecked with shadows.
In the face of such natural forces one forgets
errors of grammar and punctuation. If one does
not, one ought not to read Rahel. She is an in-
fallible touchstone of human quality.

After receiving a letter of Rahel's Gentz writes:
11 Do men write thus? No! Nor gods either! Beings
intermediate between gods and men, childlike great
spirits, sublime children, souls in which the whole
world at once, with its heights and depths, is ever
mirrored, which shake down the greatest thoughts
and the greatest emotions like hazel-nuts from their
ever-teeming bushes and throw them into common
life. ... In every word the world blossoms ....

"They [the letters] are living human beings, which
move along with beautiful, dear, tender hands, little
feet, godlike eyes, and especially godlike red lips." . . .
And Rahel herself quotes with approval another ex-
pression of Gentz's, that her letters are like " fresh,
aromatic strawberries, to which, however, mould and
roots are still hanging," since the plant has just been
plucked out of the ground.

Her letters touch upon a multitude of subjects.
There is nothing methodical about them; great
and little subjects come pell-mell, one after an-

Letters 297

other; she writes of what interests her at the
moment and the assertion that she "can talk
about Kant and new hats in the same breath"
is almost literally true. A French critic who has
called her "at the same time simple and compli-
cated, universal and original, as open as Nature
and like her a mystery" sums up herein the im-
pressions he has received from her letters. It is
always nature that she recalls, by the incalcula-
bility, the inexhaustibility, the originality, and the
vital force of her utterances. And nature forms
the background of them all. She often begins her
letters with a description of the weather in two or
three lines, a description so full of essentiality that
it throws one at once into just that frame of mind
which such weather produces. "Father Ether"
is to her, as to Holderlin, the most important of the
gods: "Fine weather and climate is the most
beautiful thing on earth. It is a real god. One
can and ought only to enjoy it and feel it, " she
writes.

She says with truth that "in the history of my
life the weather and my health must have their
place." Her physical susceptibility and sensi-
tiveness are so strong that "too thick, too thin,
too warm, or too cold air" makes her ill, while a

298 Rahel Varnhagen

due agreement between herself and the air is a
conscious delight. We can see how Rahel finally
reached a point where she "asked nothing of life
but some sort of a correspondence with the
atmosphere." And we can only understand Ra-
hel's letters by allowing for the strength of the
atmospheric influence which affected her mood
at the time of writing.

The weather conditions that are describ^-d at
the beginning of the letters1 are not the only
conditions that determine them. Rahel can only
write, she says, when "a certain kindling takes
place within her." But the slightest thing may
check the flow of this humour, a bad pen, for
instance, or a trembling of the hand. Words, ex-
pressions, form, train of thought, construction, all
are affected by it, and her style is, according to
circumstances, rugged, flowing, playful, or calm.

But above all we must remember that all per-
sons sensitive to this extent are also creatures of
instinct; that their sympathy or antipathy is de-
cided with the rapidity of lightning ; that their eye

1 Here are some examples, in March: " Snow on'the roofs and
in the streets. But it is already disappearing; the thick clouds
are parting; brightness, if not sunshine, pierces through." Or
in December: "Gloomy, grey, damp autumn weather; warmish,
undecided temperature. Very black streets."

Letters 299

speaks before their thoughts; that their feelings are
so strong that he who regards the expression of
these feelings as adequate to the facts, whereas it
is only adequate to such person's impression of
the facts, will be misled with regard to the
facts.

Depth of sensibility, susceptibility of the senses,
delicacy of instinct, penetration of thought are all
combined in that prophetic state of mind, that
lion's spring, with which Rahel's feeling seizes its
object.

"Feeling is much more delicate than thought,"
she says, and she relies blindly upon feeling, even
when she allows thought to collect arguments in
support of it.

These arguments may be more or less good:
feeling itself is always the valuable element, often
the infallible guide, in Rahel's subjective judg-
ment. The objective value others assign to it
depends, of course, upon the reliance each one has
in Rahel's instinct for value or non-value. I for
my part doubt the judgment of those who do not
perceive the divinatory certainty in Rahel's.

And even if Rahel's opinions may be contra-
dicted, of what importance is that compared with
the radiant honesty and genuineness with which

300 Rahel Varnhagen

in these wonderful letters she sends her whole soul
"for the enjoyment and use" of her friends?

Rahel's letters and a number of aphorisms, of
which some were published in reviews during
her lifetime, are her only contributions to litera-
ture. The fact that she once calls these aphorisms
Results & la Chamfort is no evidence at all of her
having taken Chamfort, as some have assumed, as
her special model. French literature can show
earlier and greater authors in this department,
authors whom Rahel knew well, and she always
admired French elegance and lucidity of expres-
sion, qualities which she did not herself possess.

But even if no one before Rahel had written
in aphoristic form, she would have been led to do
so. For this form was her natural and necessary
mode of expression, as it is that of all poets with-
out the gift of poetry and of all thinkers without
the inclination to systematising. She herself
best characterised her literary productions in the
words: "They were shot out by explosions, there
are jewels among them. "

Varnhagen published after Rahel's death a selection
of her letters with the title: Rahel, a Memorial for her

Letters 301

Friends, and with the motto from Holderlin's Hyperion:
Still und bewegt (calm and emotional). Afterwards
his niece, Ludmilla Assing, published the pamphlet,
Aus Rahels Hersensleben. Besides these there are
Rahel's complete correspondence with David Veit
and her correspondence with Varnhagen. For those
who cannot spare the time to read through all this,
I recommend as a companion and complement to my
delineation the condensation of Varnhagen's book,
edited by Dr. Hans Landsberg (in the Renaissance-
Bibliothek, published by L. Simion, Berlin, 1904).

Varnhagen published Rahel's letters as "a
memorial for her friends. " But he felt that the
book would have a wider circle of readers and a
more enduring influence. He expresses the hope
that when the German nation returns to "the
beautiful origins of its intellectual culture," Rahel
will be rightly understood ; it will then be seen that
in her everything is "significant and important,"
since her original and pure nature showed itself
in everything, from her care and orderliness in
the smallest everyday matters to her thoughts on
the highest things. But Varnhagen does not
regard this return as the only preliminary condi-
tion of a true understanding of Rahel: it is also
necessary that the conventional morality be dis-
carded ; that love and marriage be looked at from

302 Rahel Varnhagen

other points of view; that honour give place to
shame and shame to honour. Not till then, Varn-
hagen thinks, will the pages be rightly understood
in which Rahel reveals herself, freely and grandly,
wonderful in the purity of her freedom from pre-
judice, in her elevation above "all prudery and
hypocrisy," true and open, frankly confessing
what others have kept to themselves.

Has this time yet arrived, or is Rahel still before
the age?

Rafael's letters reveal herself from early youth.

"Tears, splendour, and fury" are characteristic
of her whole life, above all the earlier part of it.
She never attains that harmony which can only be
given by a perfect happiness.

But she attains the equilibrium which results
when we have succeeded in forgiving, if not in
understanding existence. It is this inward de-
velopment that we witness in her letters. Varn-
hagen, who could say with truth that he knew
about Rahel all that one person can know of
another, signalised her as the most innocent,
tender, pure, delicate, upright, and pious person
he had ever known ; the most chaste in the highest
sense of the word ; he declared that the genuineness

Letters 303

that underlay all Rahel's life and actions was so
great that beside her all others appeared common-
place. "Indeed," he wrote in this connection,1
"all her genius and talent, mighty as they are,
vanish before the gushing life in her breast."
It is true that she has "acuteness, wit, imagina-
tion, sense, a pure, enthusiastic view, the noblest
veracity. But," he concludes, "the innocence
and naivete of this truthful human heart are the
most beautiful things my eyes have ever beheld."

Every one who has come to know Rahel closely
will agree with Varnhagen.

Rahel's individuality has the most rigid limits
and her sympathy the most delicate under-
standing; she is sensuous with the most suscep-
tible receptivity, and every nerve in her sensitive
organism is in the power of the soul; she is a
sexual being in every drop of her blood, and at
the same time a " Vollmensch, " in whom the
man's mental power, the child's innocence, and
the woman's depth of feeling are in complete
equilibrium. Her inmost being is calm and her
external existence is a genial intercourse. She is
rationalist and mystic, individualist and altruist.

1 To Goethe.

304 Rahel Varnhagen

She is an aristocrat and a democrat. And she is
none of these temporarily or by turns, but all of
them at the same time and at every period of her
existence. In a word, she was one of those who
have already reached the third kingdom, where
sundering fortuity has given place to the essential,
and apparently irreconcilable contradictions have
merged in a higher state, in which man is individual
and externally active, splendid in himself, and
broad-hearted in his sympathies, heathen and
Christian, genius and kindness, senses and soul!

Already the onlooker is nearer to this syn-
thesis than the active and creative. Rahel is one
of the former. And thereby she represents the
highest value women have yet brought into cul-
ture, that of being the "ancestors" of the holy
spirit.

I have elsewhere1 maintained that the leading
characteristic of the soulful person is the con-
nection and co-operation between his different
qualities. Even from this point of view Rahel
is one of the exceptionally soulful. But she is so
not only through this connection and co-operation
between already existing spiritual gifts, she also
foreshadows a future and more soulful mode of

1 In Lifslinjer II. (Lebensglaube) : on the Evolution of the Soul.

Letters 305

existence. Her unique sensibility, her visionary
gift of divination, her quick-sightedness, her cer-
tainty of instinct are manifestations of a spiritual
force to which at present only the exceptional
being has attained, but which the race may per-
haps finally acquire. Her soul has great, new
gestures; new and deeper tones of feeling vibrate
in her cries of joy and anguish ; she has found words
for hitherto unspoken inner experiences and her
silence conceals secrets yet unsuspected, with which
her lips already tremble.

Nietzsche describes the impression he once
received when, without seeing the singer, he only
heard a deep, fine contralto voice. "We at once
imagine," he says, "that somewhere in the world
there may be women with lofty, heroic, royal
souls, able and ready to make grandiose remon-
strances, resolutions and self-sacrifices, able and
ready for lordship over men, since what is best
in man, apart from sex, has become in them an
incarnate ideal."

Rahel's deep contralto voice is such a pro-
phecy, and at the same time a confirmation, of
this great dream of the woman of the future.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In Rahel Varnhagen, ein Lebens- und Zeitbild, by
Otto Berdrow (Stuttgart, Greiner & Pfeiffer, 1903),
the following bibliography is given:

Rahel, ein Buch des Andenkens fur ihre Freunde.
With portrait. 3 vols. (Berlin, Duncker &
Humboldt, 1834.)

Briefwechsel zwischen Varnhagen und Rahel (aus
dem Nachlass Varnhagens von Ense). 6 vols.
(Leipzig, F. A. Brockhaus, 1874-5.)

Briefwechsel zwischen Rahel und David Veil (aus
dem Nachlass Varnhagens von Ense). 2 vols.
(Leipzig, F. A. Brockhaus, 1861.)

Brief e von Staegemann, Metternich, Heine und Bettina
von Arnim (nebst Briefen, Anmerkungen und
Notizen), ed. by Varnhagen von Ense. (Leip-
zig, F. A. Brockhaus, 1865.)

Briefe von Chamisso, Gneisenau, Haugwitz, W. v.

Humboldt, Prinz Louis Ferdinand, Rahel, Ruckert,

L. Tieck u. a. (nebst Briefen, Anmerkungen und

Notizen), ed. by Varnhagen von Ense. (Aus

307

308 Bibliography

dem Nachlass Varnhagens von Ense). 2 vols.
(Leipzig, F. A. Brockhaus, 1867.)

Brief e von Alexander von Humboldt an Varnhagen von
Ense aus den Jahren 1827-58. Nebst Auszugen
aus Varnhagens Tagebuchern und Briefen von
Varnhagen und A. v. Humboldt. 2nd edition.
(Leipzig, F. A. Brockhaus, 1860.)

Briefwechsel zwischen Varnhagen von Ense und Oelsner,
nebst Briefen von Rahel. Edited by Ludmilla
Assing. 3 vols. (Stuttgart, A. Kroner, 1865.)

Varnhagen von Ense, K. A.: Galerie von Bildnissen
aus Rahels Umgang und Briefwechsel. 2 vols.
(Leipzig, Gebruder Reichenbach, 1836.)

Varnhagen von Ense: Biographische Portraits. Nebst
Briefen von Koreff, Clemens Brentano, Frau v.
Fouque", Henri Campan, Scholz. (Leipzig, F.
A. Brockhaus, 1871.)

Varnhagen von Ense, K. A.: Denkwiirdigkeiten und
vermischte Schriften. 9 vols. (v. 1-4, Mannheim,
Heinrich Stoff, 1837-8. v. 5-9, Leipzig, Brock-
haus, 1840-59.)

Assing, Ludmilla: Aus Rahels Herzensleben. (Leip-
zig, Brockhaus, 1877.)

Ueber Rahels Religiositdt. Von einem ihrer alteren
Freunde. (Leipzig, Gebruder Reichenbach,
1836.)

Holtei, Karl von: Brief e an Ludwig Tieck. 4 vols.
(Breslau, Eduard Trewendt, 1864.)

Bibliography 309

Godecke, Karl : Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen

Dichtung. 2nd edition, edited by Eduard Gotze.

6 vols. (Leipzig, Dresden & Berlin, S. Ahlermann,

1898, vol. 3.)
Walzel, Oscar F. : Rahel Antonie Friederike Varnhagen

von Ense. In: Allgemeine deutsche Biographic,

vol. 39.
Walzel, Oscar F.: Karl August Varnhagen von Ense.

Ibid.
Hillebrand, Karl: Zeiten, Vo'lker und Menschen. 2

vols. (Berlin, Robert Oppenheim, 1875.)
Kuhne, F. Gustav: Rahel. In: Weibliche und mdnn-

liche Charaktere. ist part. (Leipzig, Wilhelm

Engelmann, 1838.)
T. H. M. (Theodor Mundt) : Rahel und Hire Zeit. In :

Charaktere und Situationen. ist part. (Wismar

& Leipzig, H. Schmidt & V. Cossel's Reise-

buchhandlung, 1837.)
Neumann, Wilhelm: Rahel. In: Schritfen. ist part.

(Leipzig, F. A. Brockhaus, 1835.)
Kalischer, Dr. Alf. Chr.: Beethoven und der Varnhagen-

Rahelsche Kreis. In: Der Bar. 1887, Nos. 1-4.

(Berlin, Gebriider Paetel.)
Gosche, Richard: Moses Mendelssohn und die ersten

literarischen Salons in Berlin. In: Vossische

Zeitung, 1886, Sunday supplement to No. 27.
Furst, I. : Henriette Herz. Ihr Leben und ihre Erin-

nerungen. (Berlin, Wilhelm Hertz, 1850.)

310 Bibliography

Cans, Eduard: Riickblicke auf Personen und Zustande.

(Berlin, Weil & Co., 1836.)
Ranke, Leopold V.: Zur eigenen Lebensgeschichte.

Ed. by Alfred Dove. (Leipzig, Duncker & Hum-

boldt, 1890.)
Strodtmann, Adolf: H. Heines Leben und Werke. 8

vols. 3rd edition. (Hamburg, Hoffman & Campe,

1824.)
Tornow- Walter, Robert: Goethe in Heines Werken.

(Berlin, Haude & Spenersche Buchhandlung,

1883.)
Schmidt-Weissenfels, Eduard: Rahel und ihre Zeit.

(Leipzig, P. A. Brockhaus, 1857.)
Steig, Reinhold: Achim von Arnim und Clemens

Brentano. (Stuttgart, J. G. Cotta, 1894.)
Geiger, Ludwig: Berlin, 1688-1840. Geschichte des

geistigen Lebens der preussischen Haupstadt.

2 vols. (Berlin, Gebruder Paetel, 1892-5.)
Geiger, Ludwig: Geschichte der Juden in Berlin. 2

parts. (Berlin, I. Guttentag, 1871.)
Treitschke, Heinr. von: Deutsche Geschichte im 19. Jahr-

hundert. (Leipzig, S. Hirzel.)
Sybel, Heinr. von: Die Begriindung des Deutschen

Retches durch Wilhelm I. Vol. i. 4th revised

edition. (Munchen & Leipzig, R. Oldenbourg,

1892).
Gottschall, Rudolf von: Die deutsche Nationalliteratur

des IQ. Jahrhunderts. Literarisch und kritisch

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dargestellt. 5th ed. Vols. i. and ii. (Breslau,
Eduard Trewendt, 1881.)

Schmidt, Julian : Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von
Leibniz bis auf unsere Zeit. Vols. Hi. and iv.
(Berlin, Wilhelm Hertz, 1886-90.)

Stern, Adolf: Geschichte der neueren Literatur. Vol. v.
(Leipzig, Bibliographisches Institut, 1883.)

Honegger, Dr. I. I. : Literatur und Kultur des ig.
Jahrhunderts. In ihrer Entwicklung dargestellt.
(Leipzig, J. Weber, 1865.)

Brandes, Georg: Das junge Deutschland. (Vol. vi.
of Hauptstromungen der Literatur des 19. Jahr-
hunderts.) (Leipzig, H. Barsdorf, 1896.)
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(London, William Heinemann.)

Prolss, Johannes : Das junge Deutschland. Ein Buch
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Votum uber das "Junge Deutschland." (Stuttgart,
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To the above works, for the most part known to me,
may be added :
Vaughan Jennings, Mrs. : Rahel, her Life and Letters.

(London, 1876.)
Immermann, Munchhausen.

312 Bibliography

Hebbel: Kritiken.

Rahel et le monde de Berlin, by Blaze de Bury (Revue
des Deux Mondes, 15 Dec. 1858.)

Rahel Varnhagen und die Romantik. Inaugural-
Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwurde
von Emma Graf . (Bonn, 1901.) Published com-
plete as Heft 28 of Literarhistorischen Forschung-
en (Berlin, E. Felber.)

Funck: Rahel. (Bamberg, 1835.)

Angelus Silesius und Saint-Martin. Auszuge und
Bemerkungen von Rahel (1834).

Rahels Theater- Urteile. Mitgeteilt von Varnhagen
von Ense. In Lewalds Theaterkursen. (Stutt-
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Articles by Riccarda Huch (Die Zeit, 1902) and Jakob
Wassermann (Der Tag, 1904.)

Rahel, ein Buch des Andenkens fur ihre Freunde.
Shorter edition, with introduction, by Dr. Hans
Landsberg. (Berlin, Simion Nf., 1904.)

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